Sal 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, 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.
“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 problems such as depression, anxiety disorders, and compulsive 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 psychological 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 conclude 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.
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 ourselves 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 reclaiming 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).
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 culprit 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 successful 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 are to heed the direction our lives are taking. Like a navigator plotting a ship’s course toward maturity, 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—anywhere. 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 clumsy, 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 always 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.
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 aggression 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 confronted 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.
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 sanctimonious 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, satisfactory 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’ command to be perfect—and attempt to become just that. However, the Greek word teleios, translated “perfect” in many Bibles, is better understood to mean “complete” 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.
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 the 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 compulsively, 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 permitting 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 Christians, who perceive regressions, feelings of rage, and failure as “backsliding” or “getting off track” or “going down the tubes.” They do not understand that regression 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.
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 condition.
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 boundaries. They begin accepting their own imperfections. Clinical symptoms begin disappearing. People generally no longer need professional help after successful treatment. But beware: Conflicts and internal problems are not over forever. As long as we’re 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.