Secular Growth and Transformation

 

What role does truth play in our lives? It certainly plays a prominent role. For example, it is essential when it comes to maintaining a car. I had bought an excellent car from a neighbor, but in order to save a little money, I failed to use antifreeze as I should have and cracked the engine.

However, does truth play a role in self-maintenance and growth? Scripture assures us that it must: 2 Timothy 3:16–17 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Does truth have a role regarding our beliefs, especially what we believe about ourselves? When it comes to secular psychotherapy, it doesn’t seem to have much of a role if any. It’s more about reducing our presenting problems through building self-esteem:

 Psychologist Harold Sacheim had written: “Through distortion, I may enhance my self-image, not because at heart I am insecure about my worth but because no matter how much I am convinced of my value, believing that I am better is pleasurable. Such self-deceptions may prove to be efficient in constructing or consolidating a solid and perhaps even ‘healthy’ identity.”

Sacheim claimed that self-deception plays a necessary role. Psychologist Shelley E. Taylor concurs: “Those with an exaggerated sense of their own mastery tend to have inflated views of their self-worth and likelihood of future success. It is unusual to find a person who is so overly optimistic about the future but lacking in self-esteem or mastery, beliefs that would seem to be essential to the implementation of a rewarding future.” (Positive Illusions, 234)

Taylor associates self-deception, an inflated self-esteem with many positive outcomes.

 More recent findings have questioned these assumptions. Psychologist Roy Baumeister had written: “For three decades, I and many other psychologists viewed [high] self-esteem as our profession’s Holy Grail: a psychological trait that would soothe most of individuals’ and society’s woes. We thought that high self-esteem would impart not only success, health, happiness, and prosperity to the people who possessed it, but also stronger marriages, higher employment, and greater educational attainment in the communities that supported it.”

Besides, an inflated self-esteem is strongly associated with narcissism, a relationship destroyer. How? When we have a more accurate and humbled self-esteem, we also become more grateful for what we have. Consequently, when we honestly face our many moral failures, we become more grateful for our own flawed family and friends. If we think that we are a king, we expect our family to be queens and princes. Besides, the king cannot take criticism or anything that might diminish his kingship. Instead, the king always has to be right. In contrast, the Scriptures always advise us to abide in the light of truth:

John 3:19–20 “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”

Meanwhile, the humble can endure the criticism of the light. Those who have already been humbled are not threatened by the light of exposure. They don’t always have to be right. They have already been humbled and exposed. Consequently the light is no longer a threat:

Romans 12:3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment.

Psalm 51:6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart 

Luke 18:14 “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Luke 16:15 And [Jesus] said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.”

Yes, psychotherapy can enable us to become aware of how our behavior might affect others. However, we flee from the deeper truths that point to our unworthiness and  impending judgment:

Romans 1:32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

As a result, we hate God and those associated with Him, even to the point of favoring terrorists over Christians. At this level, meaningful self-awareness becomes impossible.

Therefore, we prefer the comforting darkness in which we can repress what we know to be true. How then can we endure being humbled? Only through faith in the love and forgiveness of the one who has died for our sins:

1 Peter 5:6–7 Humble yourselves therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

Isaiah 26:3 You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.

Jesus: Luke 4:18 "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, to release the oppressed.” 

We are blinded and self-deceived. Only the Light of Christ can cure us of our crippling addiction to pride, self-righteousness, and narcissism. Therefore, love compels us to shed the Light of Christ:

 2 Timothy 2:24-26 And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

The way up is the way down. Only Christ can dispel the darkness. Transformation requires us to face our neediness, the painful truth about ourselves as Jesus had taught:

Luke 17:10 “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty. ”

It’s a matter of God bringing us into His Light, rejecting our old identity, and replacing it with the Light of truth:

Galatians 2:20: I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

What a relief! My five highly recommended psychotherapists had left me worse than I had been before.