Chapter 11: Substantial Healing of the Total Person
Chapter 11
Substantial Healing of the Total Person
In the last chapter we referred to a substantial healing. I want to point out that when we use the word substantial, we must recognize two things. The first thing is that there is the possibility of substantial healing, but the second is that “substantial” does not mean “perfect.”
The Bible makes the possibility of miracles very clear, and our experience confirms this teaching. We have seen miracles in which God reached down into history and completely healed, either physically or psychologically, at a certain point of time. But we must point out that both Scripture and experience show that while sometimes God does this, sometimes he does not. This is not always a matter of faith, or of the lack of faith. God is personal, and he has his own purposes. Just because a person is not healed physically, we must not assume that this necessarily implies a lack of faith.
Let us notice that even when God does heal a person perfectly in one illness, that person may not be in perfect health. Here is a person with a hernia, let us say, who is completely healed of the hernia in answer to prayer. God has done this miracle in answer to prayer, in response to faith, and according to his own purpose. But this does not mean that this person is now at all points physically perfect. He may have a headache that very night! Thus, even such a miracle falls properly under the term substantial. It is exactly the same with psychological healing. A person may be healed psychologically, but that does not mean he will be psychologically perfect the rest of his life. I often think of Lazarus after he was raised from the dead. He surely had physical sickness after this; he may have had psychological depression; and we must remember that eventually he died again. The results of the fall continue until the second coming of Christ.
If we refuse to move—physically, morally, or psychologically—short of perfection, we will not have what we can have. At this point there is danger that even the Christian may want to be God; that is, he may consciously or unconsciously set a standard of superiority, based on the unusual value he puts on himself. Sometimes we do this to ourselves, and sometimes our families do this to us. A family may place undue pressure upon a child of the family by expressing abnormally high expectations of behavior or achievement—just because the child is a child of their family. Often when one hears the cry, “I am not equal to others,” in reality the cry means, “I want to be better than others, and I am not.” Let us be careful to be honest at this point. It is dangerously easy to have within ourselves, as Christians, the old longing to be God—so that we cry within ourselves, “I should be superior because of who I am.” We deny the doctrine of the Fall, and we build a new romanticism if we fail to accept the reality of our limitations, including our psychological struggles. Thus we lose the “substantially” in beating ourselves to bits trying to be what we cannot be.
I am not to set myself at the center of the universe and insist that everything bend to the standards that I have set upon my own superiority. I am not to say, “I must be thus,” and if it is not thus, there is nothing but psychological despair. Some people are totally caught in this, but all of us have something of it within ourselves, swinging pendulum-like between conceit and despair.
This is true not only in the psychological area, of course; it is true in all the relationships of life. One does not have to have had much pastoral experience to have met married couples who refuse to have what they can have, because they have set for themselves a false standard of superiority. They have set up a romanticism, either on the romantic side of love or the physical side, and if their marriage does not measure up to their own standards of superiority, they smash everything to the ground. They must have the ideal love affair of the century just because they are who they are! Certainly many of the multiple marriage and divorce situations turn upon just this point. One couple refuses to have less than what they have set as a romantic possibility, forgetting that the Fall is the Fall. Another may want sexual experience beyond what one can have in the midst of the results of the Fall. You suddenly see a marriage smashed—everything gone to bits, people walking away from each other, destroying something really possible and beautiful—simply because they have set a proud standard and refuse to have the good marriage they can have.
We wait for the resurrection of the body. We wait for the perfect application of the finished work of Christ for the whole of man. We wait for this, but on this side of the Fall, and before Christ comes, we must not insist on “perfection or nothing,” or we will end with the nothing. And this is as true in the area of psychological problems as it is in all other areas of life.
Having said that, let us add that we are not to go to the other extreme, and expect less than to act in the circle of the being God made man to be—that is, in his own image, rational and normal. What does this mean? Well, let us think of Pavlov’s bell. Pavlov’s bell was the beginning of the experimentation of a mechanically conditioned reflex. He rang a bell in front of the dog before he fed him, and after proper conditioning, the saliva came to the dog’s mouth any time the bell was rung. This is perfectly correct concerning dogs, for that is what dogs are and what God made them to be. But woe to man when he begins to act as though this is all there is to man, because we have not been made in this circle of creation. We have been made in the circle of creation in the image of God—not only moral but rational.
The understanding of a conditioned reflex in regard to man has its limited place. If I study my physical structure, mechanics has its place in regard to the tension of the muscles and so on. But this is not all there is to man. If you deal with a man merely as a structural machine you miss the point, and if you deal with a man merely as a set of psychological conditionings, you miss the central point. Consequently, as Christians begin to deal with psychological problems, we must do so in the realization of who man is. I am made in the image of God; this being so, I am rational and I am moral, thus there will be a conscious and responsible behavior. We must not think we can simply trigger ourselves or others into mechanical reflexes and all will be well. If we begin acting this way we will deny the doctrines that we say we believe. In action that comes anywhere near the heart of psychological problems, there will be a conscious aspect, because God has made man this way.
The basic psychological problem is trying to be what we are not, and trying to carry what we cannot carry. Most of all, the basic problem is not being willing to be the creatures we are before the Creator. Let us imagine that you meet Atlas and he is carrying the world on his shoulder. In classical mythology he has no problem in carrying the world on his shoulder, because he is Atlas! You meet him walking somewhere on the shores of North Africa, where the Atlas mountains are. He sees you coming and says, “Here, you carry the world for a while.” And you are squashed. You are squashed because you cannot carry what you have been handed. The psychological parallel is that man is trying to be the center of the universe and refuses to be the creature he is. He is trying to carry the world on his shoulder and is crushed by the simple factor that it is too much for him to bear. There is nothing complicated about it; he is squashed in trying to bear what no one except God himself can bear because only God is infinite.
The squashing can come in various ways. When you pump too much air into a weak tire, it will blow out. The reason for this blowout is the excessive pressure, but the actual break comes at the point of the weakness in the tire. Since the Fall, we all have points of weakness. With some of us it tends to be physical; with some it tends to be psychological. If we carry what we cannot, the blowout will come and it will come at the place of our inherent weakness. The central, overwhelming pressure is that of needing to be the integration point of all things because we are not willing to be the creatures we are. We refuse to acknowledge the existence of God, or—even though acknowledging his existence intellectually—in practice we refuse to bow before him in the midst of our moment-by-moment lives.
Christian doctrine speaks first in rational answers, and then in practice, to the psychological results of man’s revolt since the fall. In other words, it is not necessary to search for psychological healing outside the total structure of Christian doctrine. The Christian gospel is the answer not only theoretically but also in practice within the unity of the biblical teaching, and specifically within the unity of the creature-Creator relationship, and the redeemed-Redeemer relationship. Within the structure of the unity of biblical teaching there is the possibility not only of theoretical psychology, but also of a practical psychology.
One of these psychological results of man’s rebellion is fear. Fear can come in many guises, but generally it comes in three areas: the fear of the impersonal; the fear of nonbeing; and the fear of death. We can think of other types of fear, but many fears will fit under these headings. Fear can be small, or it can be the horror of great despair. Or it can be anywhere in between these extremes. Many modern men who have come to a philosophy of despair have gone through such a horror of great darkness. Many psychologists, for example, Carl Gustav Jung, will meet this fear simply by telling the patient to act as if God were there. In his last interview, about eight days before his death, Jung defined God as “whatever cuts across my will outside of myself, or whatever wells up from the collective unconscious within myself.” And his advice was, just call it “God,” and give in to “him.” In other words it is acting as if.
But in the unity of the biblical teaching, God really is there. He is not just the father-image projected, but the Christian system begins with the comprehension and declaration of his objective existence. Consequently, there need never be a fear of the impersonal. But if men do not have this God, they are eventually faced with only a stream of energy particles. Or, if they shut themselves up and put on blinders to this conclusion, they are shut up to a faceless humanity. And the more they become aware of humanity the more they realize its facelessness. Out of this springs a real fear of the impersonal, and they are right to be afraid.
But the solution for the Christian is that there need never be a fear of the impersonal, because the personal-infinite God is really there.
This is not just a piece of theater. If we live in the light of the doctrine that we say we believe, this very basic form of fear dissolves away. This is what the Christian parent says to the little child who is afraid to be left alone when the mother goes out of the room. There is nothing complex about it. It is as simple and profound as God’s existence. The little child is afraid to be left alone in the dark with the impersonal situation, and we may stay there and comfort him, but eventually the Christian parent has to say, “But you do not have to be afraid, because God is here.” This is a profound truth, not just for children. Indeed, it is the glory of the Christian faith that the little things are profound and the profound things are overwhelmingly simple.
So when the mother teaches the little child that God is there with him, and as the child grows and comes to know for himself that there are good and sufficient reasons to know that God is there, this has meaning in a profound sense that will prove sufficient all his life, through all his philosophic wanderings, as well as in the darkness of the night. On the basis of the existence of the biblical God, and who he is in the total structure of the Christian faith, it is not meaningless for the little child in the dark and it is not meaningless for the most diligent student in philosophy who has ever walked through the darkness of philosophical speculation. There need be no fear of the impersonal.
The second basic fear is the fear of nonbeing. Why are so many people today caught in the fear of nonbeing? Because modern man does not have any idea where he came from, and not having any answer to Being, is eventually locked up in the sequence of pure chance. Therefore he has a fear of nonbeing, and well he might. But the Christian, in the total system of Christianity, has the answer to Being, as we have already seen. Knowing the answer to Being, there is no fear of nonbeing. I have been created by an infinite-personal God, created truly outside of himself. So I know who I am in my being. I have a valid existence. That being so, there is no reason or need for a fear of nonbeing. There is a reason to fear hell if I am in revolt against God, but there is no fear of nonbeing.
The third basic fear is the fear of death. And I deal with this last because it is the most obvious fear, and because in the Christian perspective it is obvious that we should not and need not be afraid of death. To Christians there is a continuity of life on a straight horizontal line from this life on into the world to come. The chasm is past at the new birth. Death is not the chasm; we already have passed from death to life. In earlier chapters, we have stood at the Mount of Transfiguration and there we have seen the continuity in space and time. There is the Ascension; there is Stephen seeing Jesus; there is Paul seeing Jesus on the Damascus road; there is John having seen and heard Jesus on Patmos. Consequently, it should be very obvious to the Christian, inside the total unity of Christian doctrine, that there does not need to be a fear of death.
But now we are dealing with the practical problem, because this is not just a theoretical thing. And we must say that sometimes in the midst of psychological upheaval these truths are difficult to apply. But there is a rational framework within which we can work, think, and talk, and that is altogether different from the situation of a man who is in rebellion against God. What is needed in a time of psychological disturbance, whether it is temporary or more prolonged, is that we should help each other to act upon the total unified Christian teaching. This is entirely different from trying to work by jumping into the dark without a rational framework. We must talk to each other, we must help each other to think in the light of the truth of the total unified Christian system. In this we now have a point of conversation and contact in the total framework that will not give way under our feet. This is a very different thing from a psychologist sitting there smoking his pipe and urging his patient to roll his fears upon him personally on the basis of his own authority and personality, especially when you know he has his problems too.
I should like now to touch on another area of conflict and tension: the area of feelings of superiority and inferiority in relationship to other people. Many of us move backwards and forwards between superiority and inferiority, almost like the swing of a pendulum. This is a question of comparisons between myself and other men, arising from the fact that we are social creatures. No man lives to himself; no man lives on a desert island by himself. We shall be considering this in regard to communication with other men later, when we deal with the Christian’s relationship to others. But at this point we are confining ourselves to the internal results of feelings of inferiority and superiority. Superiority feelings are a pushing of my status in relationship to other men, as though I were not one creature among other equal creatures. For the Christian, status and validity do not rest upon relative relationships to other men. As a Christian I do not have to find my validity in my status, or by thinking myself above other men. My validity and my status are found in being before the God who is there. My basic validity and my basic status do not depend upon what men think of me. So the problems of superiority are set in a completely different framework and I can deal with them without fearing that if I limit my superiority, my value, validity, and status will be totally lost.
It is much the same with inferiority. Inferiority is the reverse, the return of the pendulum of the clock after I have hung my superiority on the wall, as it were. If I realize the reality of my being a creature, I shall not begin with the expectation of being either unlimited and infinite, or better than others. I know who I am. I am a creature. I see myself in the light of having been created by God and in the light of the true, historic fall. So I understand that this is what I am and what all other men are. This is an entirely different starting point. I do not have to set up a desire or an expectancy that I am intrinsically superior and then feel inferior because I do not reach it. If there is anything that throws the windows open and lets the sun in, it is this. The struggles of superiority and inferiority in the total framework of the biblical teaching can be healed in just as profound a way as guilt feelings. As Christians, by the grace of God, let us act upon what we say we believe.
Christianity has another strong point here, and that is that when I find these marks of tension or conflict upon me, there is something that can be done about them. Whatever may be the mark of sin in me at any point, whenever I find these marks upon me in any situation, I am not at a dead end, because the blood of Jesus Christ can cleanse me from all true guilt, not just once, but as many times as I need. There is always the possibility of a truly new start within a totally rational framework. Thank God that there is always this possibility, upon the basis of the infinite value of the blood of Jesus Christ shed on Calvary’s cross.
Finally, let us consider some aspects of a positive psychological hygiene. As a Christian, instead of putting myself, in practice, at the center of the universe, I must do something else. This is not only right, and the failure to do so is not only sin, but it is important for me personally in this life. I must think after God and I must will after God. To think after God, as he has revealed himself in his creation and especially as he has revealed himself in the Bible, is to have an integrated answer to life, both intellectually and in practice. On any other basis I do not have this. On any other basis but this I am shut up to that phrase I find in Ecclesiastes, that under the sun “all is vanity.” When by the grace of God I think after God, I can have intellectual integration. I no longer need to play games of hide-and-seek with the facts that I dare not face.
Now the same is true in the integration of my personality, of the whole man. I must will after God. There is only one integration point that is enough, and that is God himself. As Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking among yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:18-19). Paul is talking here about wine as a false integration point. In contrast, if I have the Holy Spirit as my integration point and through him as the agent of the Trinity I am in communion with the whole Trinity. I can have joy and peace, and a song. I do not have to go along whistling to myself in the dark; there can be songs in the night that come from the inside out. Now this example uses wine, but we can understand here that it is not only wine, and becoming drunk. It is also any other thing that is made to be my final integration point instead of God himself. In my university days I put many a man to bed who tried to find his integration point in alcohol, and I had to give him a cold shower at four o’clock in the morning because of his thick head. “Excess”—there is no real joy in it. This is trying to find an integration point that is not enough in itself. And any other integration point besides God will lead to the same end. This is not just a theological or psychological trick. This is what I am. And nothing less will integrate the whole me, because that is what I was made for: to love God with all my heart, soul, and mind. Being in any other relationship is not enough. There are parts of me that are not encompassed by any other relationship.
There are many points of false peace and integration, and it is well to recognize them. Entertainment is one. Do we understand that even right entertainment can be the wrong integration point and be just as wicked and just as destructive as wrong entertainment if I put it in the place of God? There is nothing wrong with sport. Many sports are beautiful, but if sport becomes my integration point and my whole life turns upon knocking one second off my time on a downhill race, I am destroyed.
It is the same with material things. In the Christian teaching there is nothing wrong with material things as such. We do not have an aesthetic system. But it is perfectly possible for a Christian to be a materialist, with his car or his stereo set. The man who tries to find his integration point of life in his possessions is the man who is a practical materialist.
Even good music and good art must not be allowed to be the final point of integration. The artist struggles to bring all his diagonals and horizontals and verticals together in his painting so that as you are looking at it you have a feeling of peace and rest. This has a place, and it is certainly not wrong in itself. But if it is a false integration point, in the sense of being the final integration point, and if your final rest in this world depends upon looking upon a well-balanced set of verticals, horizontals, and diagonals, it is a false integration point. Music is the same. Music does give us rest. It is fine to be able to put on a recording of the music which brings you to quietness, but it is not enough as the final integration. It is not only the bad thing, but also the good thing itself which can be destructive.
It is the same with sex. Much sex today is merely an attempt to find some reality in a world that appears to have no meaning whatsoever. Often it is an attempt to “touch bottom” in a universe that is thought to have no bottom. If sex is made an absolute integration point, it is totally wrong. It is not just sinful sexual relationship that I am talking about. I mean also sexual things in their right relationship, if these become our final points of rest. They are made to be a point of rest, and as such they can be beautiful, but as our final point of rest they are destructive. And eating is exactly the same. Compulsive eating can also become a point of final integration.
Intellectual pursuits can offer false integration points. Intellectual pursuits can be to the glory of God. But today much intellectual pursuit is not a pursuit of truth, or a search for truth, but a game—the best game one can play, more exciting than skiing or chess. We here at L’Abri believe that Christianity does have intellectual answers, and that every man deserves an honest answer for an honest question. But this is not to be the final integration point. The integration point is God himself. It is possible even for Christians to put always more intellectual questions between them and the reality of communion with God. Even right doctrine can be the false integration point. Theology today is often a superior game, just like the game of general intellectual thinking. It is a most exciting intellectual sport. If I had to choose a game to fill up the absolute vacuum of being a non-Christian and having no absolute meaning in life, in my experience I could find no game across the whole philosophical spectrum as exciting as playing the theological game. And almost all modern liberal theology is just a game; it is pure gamesmanship. But even orthodox doctrine can become merely intellectual, a final integration point, and can actually shut us off from God rather than opening the doors to him, which it is meant to do. And religious organizations, including good and true churches, and programs, which are right in their own place, become poison when they become the final end.
False integration points may seem satisfactory, only to end in that which is insufficient, with bits and pieces of the total man left out. I picture false integration points as being like a garbage can into which we try to push a man. But it is not big enough, and so we jam him down, but his head sticks out. So we lift him out and then jam him down in a different way, but this time his legs stick out. So we lift him out and jam him down again, but now his arm sticks out. We never get the whole man in. It is simply not big enough. That is the weakness of all false integration points. Because of what God has made us to be in his own image, and for a specific purpose, there will always be bits and pieces hanging out of any falsely integrated life. Psychologically this means new divisions of personality and a new necessity of escape. And in all of these false integration points for the Christian there is a loss in heaven, because there is going to be a believer’s judgment, and rewards. In all these false integration points, there will be a chastising by my loving Father in the present life, because he loves me, and he wants to bring me to himself.
But here we are talking about something else as well: we see that the loss is not only in the future, and not only in the present external world under the chastening hand of the Lord to us in his love, but also inside ourselves in the thought-world. It bears upon the problem not only in the future, and not only in our present relationship with God in his love, but now, in my relationship to myself.
In our day we have become very aware of psychology, and of psychological problems, as we have never been before. I have already stressed that in modern psychology there are valuable insights, as these men have struggled with the problems. They often have good bits and pieces, but this is not enough without a sufficient base. If men act upon the teaching of the Word of God, and as proportionately men live according to the teaching and commands of the Bible, so they have in practice a sufficient psychological base. God is good to his people. To the extent that a man lives in the light of the command of the revelation of Scripture, he has a psychological foundation. Find me the faithful pastor in the old village, and I will find you a man dealing with psychological problems on the basis of the teaching of the Word of God, even if he never heard the word psychology, or does not know what it means. It is preferable to have the proper base and framework as to who man is and what his purpose is, without the bits and pieces, than to have the bits and pieces in a total vacuum.
This does not diminish the importance of learning details from the psychologist, but with him or without him, there is no real answer to man’s psychological need and crushing load apart from the Creator-creature framework, the comprehension of the Fall, and the substitutionary work of Jesus Christ in history.
If I refuse my place as the creature before the Creator and do not commit myself to him for his use, this is sin. And anything else is also misery. How can you enjoy God on any other level than what you are, and in the present situation? Anything else will bring misery, a torturing of the poor, divided personality we are since the Fall. To live moment by moment through faith on the basis of the blood of Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit is the only really integrated way to live. This is the only way to be at rest with myself, for only in this way am I not trying to carry what I cannot. To do otherwise is to throw away my own place of rest, the substantial psychological advance I as a Christian can have in this present life.
All this is not impersonal. In it all, I am not just acting “as if” I am rolling my burden on some impersonal something; rather, I am following the invitation of the infinite-personal Creator. His own invitation is expressed in 1 Peter 5:7: “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” It is not an impersonal thing. You are simply following God’s own invitation when he says, “Roll your cares upon me, because I care for you.” It is the very opposite of an impersonal situation. You are not rolling your care upon an impersonal mathematical formula. You are rolling your care upon the infinite-personal God. Jesus says, “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). This is not only an invitation to the non-Christian to come to Christ, it is a continuing invitation to the Christian as well. He is inviting us to roll these cares not upon someone else, but upon him. Once I see this, I do not need to be afraid. We would be less than truthful, I think, if we failed to acknowledge that often we are afraid to offer ourselves for God’s use, for fear of what will come. But fear falls to the ground when we see before whom we are standing. We are standing in a living relationship with a living God, who loves us, and has shown his love for us to such an extent that Jesus died on the cross. Fear falls, and we have the courage to give ourselves for his use without being afraid, when we see we are not giving ourselves in the teeth of an impersonal situation, or of a world that hates us, or an inhuman world of men. We are offering ourselves before the God who loves us, and he is not a monster, but our heavenly Father. He will not leave us in the battle as a soldier discards one piece of military equipment for another, casting it into the mud. God will never deal with us in this way. He will not use us as a weapon, without care for the weapon itself. In his hand, not only will we be useful in the battle, but even the blows brought upon us in the battle will bring us closer to himself, because he is infinite and personal, and because he loves us.
As I bow in my will in practice in this present life, it ends with communion with God as Abba, Father. Communion with God requires bowing in the area of knowledge. But communion with God also requires bowing in my will in these areas we have studied in these chapters. We are justified if we have accepted Christ as Savior. But present communion with God requires continual bowing in both the intellect and the will. Without bowing in the intellect, in thinking after God; without acting upon the finished work of Christ in my present life; and without bowing in the will in practice, as the waves of the present life break over me, there is no sufficient communion with God. Without these things I am not in my place as the creature in a fallen and abnormal world. These three things are absolutely necessary if there is to be real and sufficient communion with God in the present life. In the proportion that these things are so, then a person-to-person relationship to God is in place. To the extent that these things are so in practice, I am not divided from myself and against myself. The Creator, as Abba, Father, will even now dry my tears and there will be joy. This is the meaning of true spirituality in my relationship to myself.