SCP 11-2

IN THIS ISSUE: Towards a Christian Framework of LGBTQ Issues Page 3 | A Royal Road to the Christian Unconscious? Page 5

VOLUME 11 | ISSUE 2

THE NEWSLETTER OF THE SOCIETY FOR CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

RENEWAL | Volume 11, Issue 2

Renewal is published by the American Association of Christian Counselors. President: Tim Clinton SCP Director: Nicolene Joubert Graphic Designer: Amy Cole The American Association of Christian Counselors is chartered in Virginia and dedicated to promoting excellence and unity in Christian counseling. The purpose and objectives of AACC and the programs that it sponsors are strictly informative, educational, and affiliative. Views expressed by the authors, presenters, and advertisers are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Renewal , the Society for Christian Psychology, or the American Association of Christian Counselors. Renewal , the SCP, and the AACC do not assume responsibility in any way for members’ or subscribers’ efforts to apply or utilize information, suggestions, or recommendations made by the organization, the publications, or other resources. All rights reserved. Copyright 2024. Questions or comments regarding Renewal should be addressed to: Renewal Editorial Office, P.O. Box 739, Forest, VA 24551

HOW NEGATIVE EMOTIONS ARE GOOD: The View from Creation

ERIC L. JOHNSON, PH.D. W estern culture loves the mind. We are seriously toward our emotions, particularly our negative emotions (the unpleasant ones like anger, anxiety, and sadness). After all, we are told emotions are irrational and ephemeral . They surely cannot be trusted as a source of knowledge. The truths of logic, by contrast, are everlasting. So, we come to believe the mind is vastly more valuable in life than emotions. impressed with the power of the human intellect and its technological accomplishments. However, while becoming enamored with our minds, we develop a bad attitude

After all, we are told emotions are irrational and ephemeral . They surely cannot be trusted as a source of knowledge.

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We develop this bias early on. From a young age, we are told not to be “so emotional.” And that is because babies are all emotion. As a result, being emotional gets associated with being immature. Young children have temper tantrums, they cannot reason with their fears, and they easily get their feelings hurt. So, our parents often resorted to quick fixes. “It’s not that bad.” “There’s nothing under the bed.” “Don’t be such a baby.” “Stop that crying!” After a few years, we become aware that our negative emotions are not wanted, so we learn to “put a lid on it” and keep our feelings to ourselves, not allow them to “get the better of us.” As a result, some of us lose touch with our emotions. Males, in particular, have been socialized to be strong and not let emotions influence them (their own or those of others), so they especially tend to keep their feelings to themselves. Making things more complicated for Christians, in the Church, we may have been taught that negative emotions indicate a lack of faith. “If you really trusted in God’s goodness, you wouldn’t feel any anxiety about the future, you wouldn’t get angry at people who sinned against you, and you wouldn’t get sad when someone you love dies because they’re in a better place.” Emotions are also contrasted unfavorably with the Bible. “Emotions come and go, so Christians need to base their lives on God’s word, the Bible, because its truth never changes. When I was being discipled, I remember someone likening the Christian life to a three-car train, with the Bible as the engine, the Christian sitting in the passenger car, and the emotions consigned to the caboose. That way, the Bible alone informs our beliefs and decisions, with no influence from our emotions. There are good reasons for our culture’s preference for the mind over emotions. Learning to regulate them by the mind (with the help of others) may be the major accomplishment of childhood. Without that skill, we cannot cooperate with others or benefit from schooling. Plus, negative emotions are, by definition, unpleasant. Understandably, parents would spend a lot of energy helping their kids “put a lid on it.” The problem I am pointing to is the stark dichotomy. Mind, good; emotions, bad. For if that is all we believe about emotion, we are actually closer to stoicism than biblical Christianity. In the Christian scheme of things, emotions are fundamentally good because they are part of the human creation. Moreover, in the Bible, God Himself is revealed as being emotional. Remember His angry reaction to the sculpting of the golden calf (Ex. 32:10) and His expressed delight in Jesus (Mt. 3:17). That suggests that our emotions contribute to the image of God.

Yet, as a young adult, I was a Christian stoic. I lived in my head and was very skeptical of emotion’s influence on people’s beliefs and decisions. But then I started reading Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards (1746). In a time of great religious awakening, this pastor theologian made a compelling case that our emotions are integral to the Christian life. They are especially significant because they indicate what is important to us. If we know facts about God but have no emotion about Him, Edwards wrote, we are probably not actually Christians. That book sent me on a journey of re-evaluating the goodness of emotion and its place in the Christian life, and I began to realize we are using them all the time in our daily lives, at a subliminal level, because our emotions reflect our values, so they are subtly guiding everything we do. We pursue what we perceive to be good for us and avoid what we perceive to be bad for us. These “concerns” inform our emotional system, which has two corresponding compartments. Positive emotions are activated when we perceive something good (perhaps the sight of a friend we have not seen in a while), and negative emotions are aroused at the thought of some evil (like the sight of someone who once hurt us). Therefore, our created emotion system is meaningful —it communicates meaning (analogous to a language system!), particularly our values. So, it is far from being irrational. What do you think? Is the West biased toward the mind, or not enough? And what about the Church? Is it possible for us to find a better balance between our minds and hearts than we see in the West? And, as Christians, do we need to? C

ERIC L. JOHNSON, PH.D., is the Founder and Scholar-in-Residence at Christian Psychology Institute, Author-in-Residence at Sojourn East, and Senior Research Professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Johnson founded the M.A. in Christian Counseling degree at Houston Christian University where he served as Professor of Christian Psychology. He founded the Society for Christian Psychology division of the AACC, and is the author of Foundations for Soul Care: A Christian Psychology Proposal and God and Soul Care: The Therapeutic Resources of the Christian Faith . He’s married to Rebekah, and has two children and three grandchildren, all of whom he treasures.

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TOWARDS A CHRISTIAN FRAMEWORK OF LGBTQ ISSUES

L. EUGENE BURRUS, PH.D.

O n my bookshelf sits a book that certainly has the most colorful title of my entire library: If You Seduce a Straight Person, Can You Make Them Gay? Issues in Biological Essentialism versus Social Constructionism in Gay and Lesbian Identities. This book’s title succinctly summarizes one of the greatest theoretical challenges in LGBTQ psychology: Are experiences like same-sex attraction (SSA) or gender incongruence (GI) rooted in biology, culture, or personal choice? To complicate matters further, Christians add moral and spiritual considerations to these questions. In this article, I summarize secular theoretical frameworks and suggest a Christian alternative. 1 Secular Theoretical Frameworks One of these frameworks, modern essentialism , assumes that LGBTQ people feel and live as they do because their sexual or gendered condition is a real category. Its researchers often search for potential biomarkers that explain SSA or GI, including differences in hormones,

genetics, and neuroanatomy. In one variant of essentialism, researchers explore psychodynamic markers (e.g., overbearing mothers) of these phenomena. Assuming people with SSA or GI are essentially gay or another gender, essentialist therapy seeks to actualize this truest, core identity. 2 Social constructionism , on the other hand, views both sexual orientation and gender as products of culture. Accordingly, psychological constructs are shaped more by how we talk and think about them than biological antecedents. In therapeutic practice, this framework is more about facilitating who clients want to become rather than discovering who they really are. 3 Personal constructivism is what I name a variant of social constructionism that envisions a more radical development of the self beyond biological and cultural limitations. This framework further emphasizes the role of personal agency and explains the growing list of sexual and gender identity labels. 4

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For all of us, the distortions brought on by the fall and personal sin distort both our knowledge of and conformity to the divine framework. 9

Why These Frameworks Fall Short Modern essentialism has struggled to produce evidence for the discrete biomarkers of sexual orientation they once sought. Social constructionism, especially its more radical branch, cannot fully explain gender differences insomuch as they are rooted in biological realities. They cannot fully account for the transcultural nature of homosexual practice—the fact that it emerges in different manifestations in different cultures. Personal constructionism more radically dismisses biological realities and limitations, relying on medical technologies (à la Foucault) to create the envisioned self. Its overemphasis on personal choice also overlooks the possibility that focusing on the ability to choose can itself be culturally conditioned. Towards a Christian Framework Some Christian thinkers have identified critical realism as an alternative to the essentialism/constructionism dilemma. Critical realism “affirms a real, objective world and historical facts that transcend cultural constructs of it. It also affirms that knowledge has a subjective dimension to it.” 5 Using this framework, sex and gender have real essences in addition to social and personal constructions. Applying critical realism to sexuality and gender, I have proposed that Christian critical essentialism serves as an organizing framework. The word Christian emphasizes the divine framework for sexuality and gender as knowable through the Christian Scriptures. The word critical underscores that human knowers are limited by their stage of development, noetic sin, and brokenness in perceiving the divine framework accurately. 6 To put it another way, maturation (both developmentally and spiritually), a transformed mind (see Romans 12:2), and healing from life in a fallen world help us see the divine framework for sexuality and gender more perfectly. Finally, the word essentialism indicates that maleness and femaleness are real universals enacted by humans in particular contexts. The narrative of Noah’s Ark illustrates how this principle works out in practice (Gen 6:9-22). The Lord commands Noah to build an ark and gives Noah the specifications. However, the instructions are general enough to allow personal agency—decisions about where to put each nail and where to assign each animal. Moreso, Noah and his family will do the work of actualizing the divine specifications. Creational maleness and femaleness are similar. The Lord provides the divine framework; maleness and femaleness are the balance of sameness and difference. 7 Couples are to be one male and one female committed to a lifetime together. Masculine and feminine expressions may vary from person to person without losing their essential integrity. 8 Sexuality and Gender: A Challenge for All Humans For all of us, the distortions brought on by the fall and personal sin distort both our knowledge of and conformity to the divine framework. 9 Many with same-sex-oriented desires interpret their desires as the framework rather than seeing the sinful distortion in them. A distorted form of essentialism may lead them to see their orientation as an essential category. Similarly, many experiencing incongruence between their biological sex and their social gender are

culturally influenced to interpret their intrapsychic experience as the defining framework. Seeing gender as an open-ended improvisation with no external framework leads to engendered chaos. Moreover, idolizing gender stereotypes may lead folks to throw less stereotypical maleness or femaleness out with the bath water. The excesses of heterosexuality (i.e., promiscuity and cohabitation) and the excesses of cisgenderism (i.e., aggression and vanity) are subject to ethical and spiritual evaluation as well. In fact, Christian ministry and counseling of these issues cannot flourish without a strong awareness of the widespread brokenness in these areas. How do these theoretical issues make a difference in practice? Secular theoretical frameworks often cultivate the core beliefs of LGBTQ+ people, leading some to say, “I was born gay.” The more radical iterations will say, “I chose this way of life to slough off heteronormativity and cisgendered norms.” A Christian psychology of these issues will evaluate the moral and spiritual dimensions of sexual and gendered practices. As Christians, these issues encourage all of us to mature, repent, and heal so the practices of our bodies and the expressions of our gender more perfectly align with the beauty of God’s design. C Endnotes 1 Burrus, L.E., III. (2021). Critiquing common themes in LGBT-affirming psychologies with orthodox Christian frameworks [Doctoral dissertation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary] https:// hdl.handle.net/10392/6595. The reader is referred to this work for the full documentation, source citations, and arguments generalized across this brief article. 2 Bohan, J.S. (1996). Psychology and sexual orientation: Coming to terms. Routledge. 3 Russell, G.M., & Bohan, J.S. (1999). Implications for clinical work. In J.S. Bohan & G.M. Russell (Eds.), Conversations about psychology and sexual orientation (pp. 31-56). New York University Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com. 4 Fassinger, R.E. (2017). Considering constructions: A new model of affirmative therapy. In K.A. DeBord, A.R. Fischer, K.J. Bieschke, & R.M. Perez (Eds.), Handbook of sexual orientation and gender diversity in counseling and psychotherapy (pp. 19-50). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/15959-002. 5 Hiebert, P.G. (2008). Transforming worldviews: An anthropological understanding of how people change. Baker Academic. 6 I am indebted to Jeremy Pierre for showing me that humans are designed to learn these matters developmentally. 7 Grenz, S.J. (1997). Sexual ethics: An evangelical perspective. Westminster John Knox Press. 8 For example, alto and tenor voices are no less feminine or masculine because they cannot sing the more extremes of female and male vocal ranges, respectively. 9 Cf. Butterfield, R.C. (2015). Openness unhindered: Further thoughts of an unlikely convert on sexual identity and union with Christ. Crown & Covenant Publications. While Butterfield does not make my point here, I deeply resonate with her notion that sin is a democratizing force. Thus, the universal nature of sin means that LGBTQ folks aren’t the only ones who miss the mark with their sexuality and gender. L. EUGENE BURRUS, PH.D., is the counseling minister for the Sienna campus of Houston’s First Baptist Church. He is married to his wife, Marie, and has two, fun-loving children. Dr. Burrus enjoys speaking on and researching issues related to same-sex attraction, gender incongruence, and LGBTQ+ identification from the perspective of historic Christianity.

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A Royal Road to the Christian Unconscious?

V. ELLSWORTH LEWIS, PH.D.

T ransversing the Holy Roman Empire, roughly in the form of a cross borne eastward, were the Via Regia and the Via Imperii . Regia ran from coastal Spain to Moscow. Imperii ran from the Baltic Sea southward to Rome. During the Dark Ages, the emperor assured voyagers safe passage over these routes through vast stretches of chaos. When Freud published his seminal work on dream interpretation, he called dreams the via regia to the unconscious. Dream interpretation is not in itself unbiblical. Joseph and Daniel interpreted dreams that Pharoah and Nebuchadnezzar could not understand. On the other hand, dream interpretation in the Bible appears to be unique and prophetic, not general and psychoanalytic. More broadly, it is doubtful whether the Scriptures supply us with an explicit concept of the unconscious in the modern

sense. Christians may be reluctant to travel any royal road (be it paved with dreams or other cobblestone) into psychic territory that they find categorically suspect. And yet, some notion of an unconscious is sneakily omnipresent in the Scriptures: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” We see in a mirror dimly (1 Cor. 13:12), with hardened hearts (Heb. 3:8) and constricted bowels (2 Cor. 6:12). We are lost (Luke 19:10) and living in darkness (Luke 1:79). If all that were not enough, “whoever finds his life (psyche) will lose it” (Matt. 10:39). If the psychotherapeutic journey over the via regia is to be a Christian pilgrimage, we must begin with the unconscious. Yet, the very notion of the Un -conscious is less like a North Star than a black hole—less a matter of what is visible than a matter of what is gravitational. The unconscious is that which, while completely out of

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Despair, like dreaming, is not in itself insight. It becomes a path to insight only by way of an encounter, a cooperative interplay that is more art than science.

sight, pulls us off course and takes us where we did not (consciously) wish or intend to go. We cannot anticipate the unconscious… we only account for precisely that fraction of it that has become conscious. Looking backwards, we can speak of how something unconscious became conscious, as Freud did when he learned about himself from his dreams. And we can perhaps describe how it feels to pass from unconsciousness into consciousness. It is as though one must walk the Via Regia backwards. Does Christian psychology have a working theory of the unconscious that sits comfortably within or beside its theology? Does the working theory yield a margin of freedom to gain insights that are more experiential than doctrinal by methods that are more phenomenological than exegetical? I dare say that most Christian training programs lack such theory and method and that the lacuna implicitly shapes the boundaries of most pastoral and Christian counseling. Specifically, it produces an affinity for cognitive and positive psychology, both offering a wide berth for inserting doctrinal solutions to rationally crystallized problems. While anti-doctrinal beliefs may be cataloged and considered subconscious, this yields only a shallow concept of the unconscious. The Christian unconscious thereby becomes the pool of all doctrine (i.e., truths presumed to be knowable, known, and clearly expressed) that are misunderstood, disbelieved, not yet taken to heart, or not yet put into action. In its harsher version (which is not uncommon enough), the lies we still believe are presumed to be the chief (or even the exclusive) cause of suffering. “The [doctrinal] truth will set you free.” In most training programs in Christian counseling, doctrinal truths coexist with practical wisdom (e.g., dysfunctional beliefs) and scientific findings, but the rational basis of therapy remains intact. Bad ideas are replaced by better ideas, bad habits by better habits. The cognitive-behavioral rain, secular or Christian, falls mainly on the plain of ordinary consciousness. In either case, the implicit message can be, “When you quit believing the lie, the lie quits hurting.” Furthermore, if lies and truths can be made fully conscious simply by being articulated , then it is a short skip to supposing that suffering flows from conscious resistance to the truth. If affliction springs simply from refusal to “turn to the Lord” or “believe his Word,” then compassion evaporates in exasperation. Without a vigorous theory of the unconscious, we rouse the spirits of three ancient, famously ineffective counselors: Eliphaz, Bildad, & Zophar. Positive psychology cannot be the exclusive vehicle of a Christian approach to psychology without leading to this impasse. Truth must have qualities that are not grasped by pure reason. I submit, via imperii to the Christian unconscious, Kierkegaard’s theory of despair in The Sickness unto Death (1849). The book is subtitled A Christian Psychological Exposition for… Awakening . Fifty years before Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, Kierkegaard suggests that most of the time, Christians are asleep! The sickness unto death (despair) involves the failure to grasp that the self, though “given” in an eternal sense, is temporally experienced only rarely—only when “relating itself to itself [while it] rests transparently in the power that established it.” Since this “relating” is an act, it is invariably interrupted and must be repeated over and again. Thus, despair is not only the default condition of fallen humanity but the default condition of every Christian. The capacity for despair is, paradoxically, a divine gift, an “infinite advantage.” It makes faith possible. For Kierkegaard, this “relating” activity is the very definition of faith and is, therefore, “the formula that describes the state of the self when despair is completely rooted out.” Self is more verb than noun, and there is mortal danger in taking the self for granted (i.e., objectively). Put differently, the Christian

self (and per Kierkegaard, “Spirit is the self”) falls asleep and lies unconscious except when God simultaneously sees polarities such as mind and body as undergirded. “The human self… in relating itself (e.g., mind) to itself (e.g., body) relates itself to another .” Put differently, the self is awakened by a vital connection with the Word made Flesh for us and in us . There is a phenomenological aspect to such awakenings that is so hard to describe that even Kierkegaard points to it in terms of its antithesis, despair. Despair, like dreaming, is not in itself insight. It becomes a path to insight only by way of an encounter, a cooperative interplay that is more art than science. For Freud, cooperation with the client involves nudging free associations followed by nudging interpretations, validated finally by freedom where freedom was absent. For Kierkegaard, the cooperation with the reader involves a via negativa that is even more complex. His entire opus must be viewed as dragging us away from seeing the self objectively. God sees us eternally and objectively out of one eye, but we become our eternal selves only momentarily—only when seeing ourselves concretely and subjectively. Seeing ourselves historically (in time) or objectively (e.g., in terms of virtue or character) is always a form of unconsciousness and despair. Seeing ourselves as nakedly contemporaneous with Christ, body and soul in this moment, is awakening. The patibulum (crossbar) of the cross comes from the Latin word for open, exposed, vulnerable, and accessible. Can we carry it? Turning from the via imperii back to the via regia , at the crux of the Holy Cross, we see that the Freudian royal road is transformed. Dreams are indeed guardians of sleep, but dreams are just one aspect of a grand disguising of everything unconscious; this includes not only the Freudian (psychosexual) unconscious but the Jungian unconscious, the broader relational (e.g., Adlerian, Family-Systems) unconscious, and the traumatic unconscious. The cross’s stipes (vertical beam) include everything the Word-made-Flesh remembers for us. But the personal awakenings occur in moments—precisely in instants when we subtract our abstracted train of cognitions, our conceptualized histories and projects, and come to our senses. This requires embracing sub-rational experiences (e.g., visceral sensation, associated images, and dreams) as significant encounters with self and Spirit. We meet the Christ who is in us. And in doing so, we move away from what we see and know (what we call objectivity). Instead, we follow Him—the indwelling Savior who tells us, “Your body is My temple; this is My body.” How could this be realized except by faithfully moving toward interoception (awareness of body and space) and imagination (the images that arise from such awareness)? As we do so, interoception and imagination slowly give rise to insight. As we learn to “present our bodies” to God, our minds are also gradually transformed. C

V. ELLSWORTH LEWIS, PH.D., studied philosophy at Wheaton College under Arthur Holmes ( All Truth is God’s Truth ), and was introduced to Soren Kierkegaard by professor of the philosophy of man course, C. Stephen Evans. He then studied clinical psychology at BYU, where he researched under Allen Bergin, and was supervised by an eclectic faculty including Michael Lambert and Gary Burlingame. Dr. Lewis completed his internship in the U.S. Army Medical Department, and has worked in children’s services, medical centers, prisons, and mental health court.

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