Psychology Book Review: McMinn Assignment

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Psychology, Theology, and Spirituality in Christian Counseling

Chapter 5&6

McMinn, M. R. (2012). Psychology, Theology, and Spirituality in Christian Counseling. Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9781414349237

Chapter 5 Sin

It is striking to observe the difference one word can make in the meaning of a sentence. Richard Lederer, a New Hampshire English teacher, has written a delightful little book titled Anguished English, which illustrates the significance of the ways we place and use words in writing and speech. In one chapter he lists humorous excuse notes he has received from parents over the years. For example, “My son is under the doctor’s care and should not take P. E. today. Please execute him.”184 One strategically placed or misused word makes a big difference!

Similarly, one word makes a big difference in the way two counselors describe the relationship between sin and psychological disturbance. Albert Ellis has argued that the concept of sin is the cause of virtually all psychopathology.185 Jay Adams has argued that sin is the cause of virtually all psychopathology (except that which is caused by organic factors).186 At first glance these two positions might appear almost identical. Actually they are diametrically opposed. When Ellis refers to the concept of sin as the problem, he means that all we need to do to be healthy is to dismiss our silly ideas about right and wrong and live a life of responsible pleasure seeking. Adams leaves out the word concept, suggesting that sin itself is the problem. People are emotionally disturbed because they are sinners who have been damaged by other sinners and who need to repent and live more obediently. Ellis calls us to eliminate our sensitivity to sin; Adams calls us to heighten our sensitivity.

Though both Ellis and Adams have been misunderstood and misrepresented by many Christian counselors, they nonetheless represent extremes on an ideological continuum regarding the relationship of sin and psychopathology. Where should Christian counselors position themselves on this continuum? And once we position ourselves, how forthright should we be about confronting our clients regarding the sin in their lives?

Foundations

Psychology

The most striking thing about the psychological literature on sin is its relative absence. Though a few authors have written about the role of sin in mental illness, their articles are scattered sparingly through volumes of journals and books that line the shelves of university libraries. From among the few published works, two themes—similar to the perspectives of Ellis and Adams—can be distilled.

Sin as a Cause of Psychopathology

First, a few writers have argued that sin ought to be seen as an important cause of emotional disturbance. Biblical counselors have been saying this for several decades, but their writing is usually not visible among the general psychological literature. A few psychologists have agreed with biblical counselors in seeing sin as a cause of psychopathology.

Thirty years ago, O. Hobart Mowrer developed a group therapy approach called integrity therapy, which emphasized honesty, responsibility, and mutual concern in counteracting the psychopathological effects of sin.187 Mowrer writes:

For several decades we psychologists looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and acclaimed our liberation from it as epoch-making. But at length we have discovered that to be “free” in this sense, i.e., to have the excuse of being “sick” rather than sinful, is to court the danger of also becoming lost. This danger is, I believe, betokened by the widespread interest in Existentialism which we are presently witnessing. In becoming amoral, ethically neutral, and “free,” we have cut the very roots of our being; lost our deepest sense of self-hood and identity; and, with neurotics themselves, find ourselves asking: Who am I? What is my destiny? What does living (existence) mean?188

Mowrer reported both empirical and anecdotal evidence to support the connection between moral accountability and mental health—evidence that he claims was selectively ignored by psychologists.189

In 1973 Karl Menninger, of the Menninger Clinic, published what has become a widely cited book, Whatever Became of Sin?190 Menninger argued that both good psychotherapy and good religion help people confront their self-centeredness and move beyond their arrogance to a healthier understanding of self and others. More recently, several pastoral counselors have argued for the importance of considering sin in counseling.191

Mowrer, Menninger, and those writing in the pastoral counseling field do not represent mainstream psychology in their understanding of and emphasis on sin. Most psychologists who write about sin are interested in the cognitive processes used in understanding sin and the effects of those processes. They are more interested in the human concept of sin than in sin itself.

The Concept of Sin and Psychopathology

Are we sinners, or are we sick? Do we have moral problems or psychological problems? Our answers to these questions reflect our attributional style, and they shape the way we do counseling. By attributional style, psychologists mean the way people explain good and bad events in their lives and the lives of others.

What If This Happened?

Jeff is HIV positive and anticipates dying of AIDS eventually. He seeks counseling to deal with his emotional turmoil. Alison is married to Jeff and is dealing with her own emotional reaction to Jeff’s illness. She is seeing a different counselor. Notice that Jeff and Alison’s attributional styles will affect the emotions they are confronting in counseling. Here are two possible attributional styles:

Attributional style 1: Jeff as a sinner. Jeff believes he is HIV positive because he is a sinner. He says to himself, “If I had managed my homosexual desires better, I would not have had sex with other men and would not be HIV positive now.” Alison has a similar attribution. She says to herself, “Jeff behaved like a fool, and now he has ended up hurting his entire family.” Because of these attributions, Jeff is dealing with feelings of shame and guilt in counseling. Alison is working on her anger.

Attributional style 2: Jeff as sick. Jeff sees AIDS as a terrible sickness. He says to himself, “I am likely to become a victim of a terrible disease, a tragic illness.” Alison sees Jeff’s illness similarly and says to herself, “This is a tragic example of how unfair life can be. A young man will be struck down in the prime of his life, leaving a family that needs him.” Jeff and Alison both deal with their fears and sadness in counseling.

These examples illustrate how attributions lead to different emotional consequences.192 When we view people as sinners, we assume that they had a choice and that they are therefore responsible for the consequences of their choices: “Jeff is HIV positive because he chose to have sex with another man.” This is an example of an internal attribution. A frequent response to internal attributions is to become angry at, and often to punish, the sinner. When we view people as sick, we assume that they had little or no control over their current state: “AIDS is a random killer, striking people down in the prime of their lives.” This is called an external attribution. A frequent response to external attributions is to feel sympathy for the victim.

A number of psychologists have provided evidence that our attributional style affects mental health. Depressed people, for example, are more likely than others to attribute bad events to their own internal flaws and good events to external causes, such as luck or random chance. Those who resist depression most effectively see bad events as resulting from external or unstable factors, such as a lack of effort or bad luck, and good events as resulting from internal, stable qualities such as good ability and dedicated effort.193

Thus, based on attributional theory, it is reasonable to assume that those who attribute bad events to personal sin are more likely to be depressed and angry than those who see themselves as sick or as victims of unfortunate circumstances. Not surprisingly then, the prevailing model of mental health found in psychology is to view people as sick, an external attribution, rather than as sinners, an internal attribution. In order to break through dysfunctional cycles of shame and overwhelming feelings of guilt, counselors often help their clients externalize their attributions for failures in life. For example, a number of articles in the substance-abuse literature argue that attributing addictions to sin rather than disease is harmful and destructive. Producing guilt and shame appears to drive people further into a state of addiction.

Christian counselors find themselves caught in the middle of these two worlds, each of which prefers a different attributional style. In our Christian domain, we believe that sin is a willful rebellion against God and that it often carries painful consequences for oneself or others. People are sinners, and sin has bad consequences. In our counseling domain, we are sometimes told that emotional problems result from things beyond a person’s control: addictions, diseases, bad parenting, unfortunate circumstances, chemical imbalances. One system tells us that people are sinners; the other tells us that people are sick. How can we reconcile these two attributional systems without giving up either our commitment to Christianity or our commitment to counseling and mental health? To reconcile these two seemingly distinct perspectives, we need to consider the contributions of Christian theology and spirituality.

Christian Theology

In the psychological world, the distinction between sin and sickness is presented as a rather simplistic dichotomy. In the world of Christian theology, where sin and sickness are inextricably connected, the dichotomy disappears. Consider Millard Erickson’s definition of sin: “Sin is any lack of conformity, active or passive, to the moral will of God. This may be a matter of act, of thought, or of inner disposition or state.”194 Here we see that sin and sickness are intertwined and inseparable. Sin can be a matter of act or thought, as is generally assumed, but sin is also an inner disposition, a part of our character that resembles a chronic sickness. Theologian Edwin Zackrison explains: “Biblically, the sin problem involves more than simply our bad actions, whether personal or social in their implications and complications. In Scripture and theology sin is a condition that goes to the root of our being for it has to do with our relationship to our origin and to God.”195 Christian theology includes both a personal and an original concept of sin.196 Too often counselors who are not Christians understand only the personal concept of sin and thereby misrepresent Christianity.

What If This Happened?

Dr. Best is a psychologist who works with depressed patients, many of whom have religious beliefs. She notices that her patients come to therapy feeling guilty, often because their behaviors are not consistent with their religious belief systems. Dr. Best assumes the problem is religion and writes angry articles and books about the pathological effects of religion. Her books are quite popular, and many other psychologists begin noticing similar patterns in their clients.

In this example, Dr. Best is using a partial understanding of sin, recognizing only its personal nature and overlooking its original, universal nature. Like Dr. Best, psychologists writing about sin have generally assumed that the most devout Christians are the ones most preoccupied with managing sinful thoughts and behaviors, and they conclude that religion promotes psychopathology. Eric Fromm suggested that the goals of Christianity are powerlessness and obedience, resulting in a prevailing mood of sorrow and guilt.197 This is the same guilt that Albert Ellis observed in his religious clients, leading him to conclude that the concept of sin causes psychopathology.

Unfortunately, Fromm and Ellis are not completely wrong. Some Christians assume the same—that sin is only personal and that Christian piety is best defined by controlling specific behaviors. This is known as the heresy of Pelagianism: sin is just a set of bad habits that we need to eliminate. When we view sin as limited to personal behaviors or thoughts, we fall prey to a sin-management mentality and become vulnerable to legalism and asceticism and to excessive guilt reactions. The apostle Paul had strong words for those who tried to control their sin nature using sin-management techniques: “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’? All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence” (Col. 2:20-23).

Sin is more than a set of personal behaviors, and managing sin requires more than keeping a checklist of dos and don’ts. Sin is an original part of our character, a pervasive element of the human condition. Sin is our sickness. It is a sickness dating back to the Fall, when Adam and Eve chose to sin in the Garden of Eden. Ever since the original sin, every human being has struggled with sin. “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12).

The ubiquity of sin is both bad news and good news. It is bad because we are indeed sick, burdened by sin that affects every attitude, behavior, relationship, and thought in our lives. We are bundles of mixed motives, constantly fighting to yield more control to God and less to our sin nature. It is good because this view of sin disqualifies the objections of psychologists who claim Christians are destined to be emotionally sick.198 Christians who understand sin properly view themselves as part of a universal community of sinners. If sin is a sickness, something that affects all people and interferes constantly with our capacity to make good choices, then our attributions no longer need to be internal and shame producing. We are all pilgrims together, struggling with common temptations and burdens. Those who understand sin most accurately are able to make both internal (personal) and external (universal) attributions for the causes of their problems.

What If This Happened?

Jeff is HIV positive, and both he and Alison are working to make sense of their future. Earlier in the chapter, two possible attributional styles were suggested. Either Jeff could be viewed as a sinner (an internal attribution), getting what he deserves for rebellious behavior, or he could be viewed as a victim of a terrible sickness (an external attribution). Now we have a third alternative that combines these two attributional styles. Yes, Jeff is a sinner, and so is everyone else. Sin is a pervasive force that affects us all in various ways. Jeff’s sin carries particularly harsh consequences because sickness abounds in our fallen world, including the sickness of AIDS. Jeff’s situation is an illustration of the sometimes harsh consequences of sin, but it is not an illustration of judgment; most of us sin without the consequences Jeff faces. This attribution is both internal and external, both personal and original, leaving room for sympathy and compassion as well as disappointment, sadness, and anger.

Those who understand both the personal and original nature of sin are able to adjust to the nagging ache of fallen existence without succumbing to the excessive self-condemnation and guilt that psychologists have often associated with religion. The best response to sin is not to sink further into self-absorption and self-abasement but to recognize our need and look for healing in relationship with God.

Spirituality

Entering deeply into the spiritual life requires us to abandon sin-management and to seek inner transformation through the work of the Holy Spirit. Richard Foster puts it well: “Our ordinary method of dealing with ingrained sin is to launch a frontal attack. We rely on our willpower and determination. . . . We determine never to do it again; we pray against it, fight against it, set our will against it. But the struggle is all in vain, and we find ourselves once again morally bankrupt or, worse yet, so proud of our external righteousness that ‘whitened sepulchers’ is a mild description of our condition.”199

What If This Happened?

John sees a lay counselor at his church because he has been feeling sad and lonely lately. His counselor helps him discover some sinful attitudes and hidden resentments about his past, repent of his unforgiving attitude, and write a letter of forgiveness to his parents. John feels better after writing the letter, and he and his counselor decide their work together is finished.

This straightforward approach to counseling may have some benefits, but it is doubtful that John will experience lasting spiritual and personal growth with this approach. Though he has identified sin and vowed to stop feeling resentful, he has learned little about a more intimate relationship with a loving, gracious God, and he may find that releasing resentment is more difficult than he and his counselor anticipate. John is trying to forgive by using willpower, and willpower may not be the most effective approach. For most people in John’s situation, repenting of resentment and coming to true forgiveness requires a daily “letting go” that is found most perfectly in profound communion with Christ.

Because sin is original as well as personal, even our willpower is tainted with evil. We deceive ourselves, justify our actions, value reputation above virtue, compare ourselves with those who sin more (or at least more blatantly), smugly reassure ourselves that things could be worse, and substitute one sin for another. Human willpower alone can never conquer sin because the human will is saturated with it. To cope with sin, we need a power greater than human nature. We need God. Thomas à Kempis wrote about this in the fifteenth century: “We must not despair when we are tempted but instead, seek God more fervently, asking for his help in this time of tribulation.”200 And Thomas Merton suggests something similar in the twentieth century: “Perfection is not a moral embellishment that we acquire outside of Christ, in order to qualify for union with him. Perfection is the work of Christ himself living in us by faith.”201 And even this faith, the apostle Paul reminds us in Ephesians 2:8-9, is a gift from God, not an act of human will.

Coping with temptation and managing sin cannot be done with willpower alone because even the human will is sinful. How do we cleanse our hands from sin and purify our hearts from duplicity? By drawing near to God and allowing God to draw near to us.202 There are no rugged individualists living a victorious Christian life, only those who lean on God. Augustine wrote: “From Thee, O God, are all good things, and from my God is all my health.”203

Because properly managing sin requires us to transcend willpower and seek God, the spiritual disciplines become essential tools for holiness. The disciplines themselves do not make us holy, but they open a door to our soul, allowing God’s grace and truth to fill us. “The demand is for an inside job, and only God can work from the inside.”204

Psychological and Spiritual Health

This discussion of sin leads to some important questions for Christian counselors: Should I confront sin in my clients’ lives? Will confronting them help them experience greater psychological and spiritual health? Depending on personality style and theoretical orientation, some counselors routinely answer no to these questions and avoid confronting their clients. Though I recognize that some theoretical orientations require this nonconfrontive environment to be effective, I believe confrontation should be a valid option for most Christian counselors under many circumstances.205 But the question Should we confront sin in counseling? like many others posed in this book, is too general. A more appropriate question is, “Which clients should I confront with their sin, and how should I go about confronting them?”

In counseling, four approaches to confronting sin are appropriate in various situations: silence, pondering, questioning, and direct censure. In addition, there is the option of not confronting sin. Each approach must be carefully selected with regard to the particular client, the situation, and the nature of the therapeutic relationship. The following examples illustrate each of these approaches.

Silence

Sometimes the best way to confront sin is to remain silent and let clients work out their feelings of guilt and questions of blame on their own. This approach may be especially helpful for those who seem overly dependent on the counselor’s opinion.

Client: She thinks she owns me. I am thirty-five now, and I need her to be my friend more than my mother. It’s really not her business whom I date and whether I choose to sleep with him. It’s my business. I will sleep with Tom whenever and wherever I feel like it.

Counselor: (Silence)

Client: I’m not a bad person. I think that’s what she wants. She wants me to feel bad, as I did when I was a teenager.

Counselor: (Silence)

Client: Do you know what I mean? I just am tired of feeling like a bad person.

Notice here how the client is looking for approval from the counselor. Sometimes even an affirming head nod or verbal acknowledgment (“I see, uh-huh”) is enough to feel approval from a counselor. If the counselor had acknowledged the client’s first statement, the client might leave the session feeling that her counselor agrees that she has the right to sleep with Tom anytime and anyplace she chooses. Silence is a relatively gentle form of confrontation that prevents counselors from inadvertently permitting or encouraging sinful behaviors.

Pondering

Pondering aloud is sometimes a helpful way to confront clients indirectly and cause them to think more intently about their choices. This has sometimes been called the “Columbo technique,” named after the television detective who mastered this strategy.

Counselor: Help me out here a minute. You are saying that you don’t really think you need to behave according to your mom’s wishes. But there is tension on your face and in your voice, as if you don’t really believe what you are saying.

Client: I do believe it. It’s just that she seems so powerful. I’ve been living on my own for eighteen years, but it’s as if she’s still here, still controlling me.

Counselor: So it’s almost as if her voice is inside you.

Client: Yeah, that’s exactly what it’s like.

Here the counselor is easing the client toward a more complete understanding of conscience. The client wants to blame her mom but actually has internalized many of her mother’s values. Perhaps she feels bad about sleeping with Tom, and the counselor is helping her uncover and explore her feelings. As with silence, this is a relatively gentle form of confrontation.

Questioning

By asking specific questions, counselors are sometimes able to access clients’ values of right and wrong. This approach can help give clients a feeling of ownership over their decisions rather than simply conforming to meet the expectations of a confrontive counselor.

Counselor: What are your values about sleeping with Tom?

Client: Well, I don’t think it’s the best thing to do, but it’s not like the worst crime I could do either. My mom seems to think I’ll go to hell if I sleep with someone.

Counselor: It sounds as if her religious views are important to her. And it sounds as if yours are different from hers. What about your religious values? How do they affect your choices with Tom?

Though this is more confrontive than either of the first two examples, it respects the client’s right to articulate her own values of right and wrong.

Direct Censure

This technique should be considered only when there is a high level of trust established in the therapeutic relationship. Under ideal circumstances, it can lead to quick changes. Unfortunately, if it is misused it can also cause severe damage to a therapeutic relationship and reduce the authenticity of future sessions.

Counselor: Your mother may not express herself well in many situations, but it’s interesting that the Bible presents values that are very similar to hers.

Client: What do you mean?

Counselor: God’s Word instructs us that sex is only for marriage, and you and Tom aren’t married. Hebrews 13:4 reads: “Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers.” Perhaps that is what your mom is concerned about, too.

Clearly, this is the most extreme form of confrontation, elevating the counselor’s values to a position above the client’s values. There are times when direct confrontation is appropriate, but in my opinion it should be used very sparingly. In my years of clinical work, I have used direct censure very rarely.

Not Confronting

Sometimes confronting sin is not the best therapeutic strategy. In this example, the counselor chooses to move the session in a different direction.

Counselor: You’re feeling angry. I’d like to hear more about it.

Client: She’s always calling, always wanting to know everything about my life. And I feel I’m a grown-up now. I can make my own choices.

Counselor: It sounds as if you are feeling a need for a better boundary between you and your mom.

Client: I guess so. I’m just not sure how to tell her that.

In this example, the counselor may have determined that other important therapeutic work must be done before considering the sinfulness of the client’s behavior, such as discussing ways of asserting better communication boundaries between the client and her mother.

These examples illustrate five legitimate alternatives when discussing sinful behavior in counseling. Choosing which approach to use in a specific counseling situation requires discernment, wisdom, an understanding of the counseling relationship, and self-awareness. As in previous chapters, the following three questions should be used in coming to careful decisions about confronting sin.

Will This Help Establish a Healthy Sense of Self?

he Christian life is not a matter of fine-tuning our previous self to reduce our propensity to sin. Rather, Christ calls us to exchange our old self for a new self. We are to be transformed, radically changed, born again. The apostle Paul put it this way: “Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin” (Rom. 6:4-6).

A Christian view of self calls us to give up one life for another.206 In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis describes our normal tendency to try adding the Christian life on top of our natural self. We only hope that our natural self will still have time to be expressed and nurtured. So we struggle, trying to figure out how to give more time or money or resist certain temptations and sins, and we end up feeling deprived, hampered, and angry. Lewis writes: “The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it.’”207

Christian counselors have discussed confronting sin in counseling for many years, but too often we limit our discussion to confronting personal sin and end up teaching our clients the type of dysfunctional religion that C. S. Lewis is discussing. Consider the client, previously discussed, who wants permission to sleep with her boyfriend, Tom, anytime and anyplace. By directly confronting her sin we might, under the best circumstances, be able to change her behavior. She might become chaste and wait until marriage for sex, though this seems an idealistic outcome. But even if she succeeds in behavioral change, have we helped her accomplish real inner transformation? Has she replaced an old self with a new self, or has she merely added a behavioral proscription to the old self? Has she confronted the reality of original sin, or has she just mastered some sin-management strategies to control personal sin? Has she given Christ all of herself, or has she given just one small part of herself?

All these questions can be summarized into one global question for Christian counseling: Do we push people or attract people toward spiritual transformation? I suspect the only effective way is to attract people to the spiritual life. Christian counselors who confront sin but do not live out the fruit of a Spirit-transformed life (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control) inadvertently teach their clients a faulty approach to spiritual formation by trying to push them toward spiritual maturity.

In the midst of life’s hurried and frantic pace, we easily resort to behavioral-management strategies, assuming we can change from the outside in. But in times of quiet, moments of calm, as we set aside life’s hurried pace and renew ourselves in God’s presence, we recognize that God wants to change us, and our clients, from the inside out. God wants surrender, not sin-management tactics.208

Here are two more examples. Consider which has the greatest likelihood of eventually leading to inner transformation and surrender.

Outside-In Approach

Counselor: Your mother may not express herself well in many situations, but it’s interesting that the Bible presents values that are very similar to hers.

Client: What do you mean?

Client: So you think she’s right. I guess I do too, but it’s just so hard not to feel like a kid again when she is constantly telling me that I’m doing the wrong thing.

Counselor: Is it any easier to think about God telling you what is right and wrong?

Client: I guess so. I mean, that has always been important to me. But when Mom tells me not to do something, it makes me want to do it all the more.

Counselor: How about when God tells you?

Client: It’s easier. I know God wants the best for me. And sometimes I think Mom just wants me to look good so she looks good. Yeah, I think I need to make some changes.

Counselor: Let’s spend some time talking about how you might make those changes. . . .

At times, direct censure is an appropriate approach to sin. But most of the time, in my opinion, it is more appropriate simply to model the fruit of a transformed life with the ultimate goal of helping people find their deep inner cry for intimacy with God and others.

Inside-Out Approach

Counselor: (Silence)

Client: I’m not a bad person. I think that’s what she wants. She wants me to feel bad, as I did when I was a teenager.

Counselor: (Silence)

Client: Do you know what I mean? I just am tired of feeling as if I’m a bad person.

Counselor: I’m wondering if that is a familiar feeling for you.

Client: I’ve always felt bad. Nothing I do is good enough. Even now, I feel as if you aren’t saying anything. As if you think I’m a bad person.

Counselor: That’s an important feeling for us to explore.

Client: Well, do you? Do you think I’m bad?

Counselor: Tell me what you think.

Client: (pause, followed by tears) I feel bad. I feel bad all the time.

In this example, the counselor is kind and direct without condoning sin yet focuses the discussion toward the inner life of the client. From here, the client can begin to explore how she has always felt unworthy and bad. Whereas the non-Christian counselor might then dissuade her and convince her she is a good person, the Christian counselor will help her see the universality of her concerns. The client is like every human, plagued with self-serving desires, an unhealthy need for approval, and the grief and loneliness that come from living in proximity with other fallen humans. Fortunately, a gracious God loves her despite her humanness and is willing to transform her character into something beautiful.

Will This Help Establish a Healthy Sense of Need?

We often assume that confronting sin will help people recognize their errors and admit a need for God. Fortunately, this is sometimes true. In the context of a trusting therapy relationship, direct confrontation is sometimes helpful. Unfortunately, this assumption is only sometimes true. At other times, confrontation pushes people away, driving them further into patterns of denial and defense. In these cases, a less direct confrontation of sin is almost always a better approach. How can we tell the difference? Which clients can handle direct confrontation, and which should we treat more gently? Four factors should be considered.

Personality Disorder

The majority of the people who seek help from counselors have the flexibility and adaptive capacity to adjust to new situations, learn new ways of thinking, explore their feelings openly, and make substantive behavioral changes. However, a portion of counseling clients come with personality disorders, a term used in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals of Mental Disorders to indicate marked inflexibility and maladaptive relational skills.209

Clients with personality disorders are likely to respond poorly to confrontation. Some may become excessively compliant in order to please the counselor but not make significant internal changes. Others may become defensive and angry and may withdraw from the therapeutic relationship. Still others may work to make the recommended changes but may do so in an obsessive-compulsive manner that worsens their psychopathology. Whenever possible, it is important to have an accurate diagnosis, including the presence or absence of a personality disorder, before making decisions about directly confronting clients.

I recently surveyed Christian counselors to find out how frequently they used controversial diagnoses, such as multiple personality disorder (now called dissociative identity disorder), ritual abuse, and childhood sexual abuse. To disguise the purpose of the study, I also listed several other diagnoses that I was less interested in, including personality disorders. I sent the same survey to a control group of psychologists selected randomly from one division of the American Psychological Association. The surprise finding of the survey was that Christian psychologists and lay counselors report seeing more people with personality disorders than psychologists selected without regard to their religious identity!210

As I thought about this surprising finding, it made sense. Within our Christian circles, we have an extensive counseling network for people with relatively minor problems. Christians generally see a pastor or a church-based counselor first. If they do not improve, they may be referred to a Christian psychologist for help. When they need long-term care that their insurance benefits will not cover, they may be sent to see a lay counselor who works without charge. In the non-Christian world, people will often see a psychologist first, without working through the layers of help available to Christians. Thus, Christian psychologists and lay counselors may see the most difficult and chronic counseling cases, including clients with personality disorders.

Whatever the reason for these findings, it is important to recognize that some Christian counselors work with many clients who have personality disorders. Directly confronting sin is usually not wise with these clients, especially in the early stages of treatment.

Start Small

It is wise to start with smaller, less intimidating types of confrontation before trying to confront a cherished belief or behavior. This gives a counselor the opportunity to see how a client handles confrontation. Consider the following example.

What If This Happened?

Counselor: As we begin today, I would like to discuss the starting times of our sessions with you. I’ve noticed that you have been ten minutes late to each of the last two sessions. It’s your time, but I’ve been concerned that the shorter sessions might interfere with what we’re trying to do in counseling.

A client’s response to this confrontation can be used to predict how he or she will respond to more significant confrontation later. Here are three possible responses:

Response A: “Yes, I’ve been caught in traffic both weeks. I’m sorry, and I realize it is to my benefit to be here on time.”

Response B: “Oh, I know, I am so sorry. I really don’t have any excuse. I feel so bad. Are you mad?”

Response C: “Hey, I figure I’m paying the bill. It’s my time, and I can use it however I want. Right?”

If the client responds to a minor confrontation by affirming appropriate responsibility for the problem, as in response A, this client probably has the emotional resources to handle other confrontation well also. If the client responds by acquiescing or wallowing in shame, as in response B, it is important to help the person gain more self-confidence and a clearer sense of identity before directly confronting sin. Those who respond in anger or by becoming highly defensive, as in response C, will probably respond in a similar way to other forms of confrontation. It will be important to let the therapeutic relationship have a softening effect on these clients before actively confronting sin.

Therapeutic Alliance

I remember making a driving error once and having an angry cowboy in a Ford pickup lean out his window, shake his fist at me, and yell, “Hey, buddy. Learn to drive!” For some reason I didn’t take him very seriously. I didn’t go home and pull out my driver’s manual. I didn’t enroll in a driver’s education course. I didn’t even reread the owner’s manual to my car.

My response would be different if Lisa, who has known me for twenty-four years and has been my spouse for seventeen years, sat me down on a quiet evening and said, “Mark, I’ve been concerned about your driving. You seem to put yourself and the family at risk, and I would really like you to consider taking a refresher course in driving.” I wouldn’t be much happier with Lisa than I was with the cowboy in the Ford, but I would be more likely to comply. If Lisa, whom I know and trust, believes I need to improve my driving, then I need to take her seriously. The same is true in the counseling relationship. It is easy to discount the words of strangers. But as a counseling relationship deepens and as trust is established, words of confrontation are taken more seriously. This suggests that we should not hurry to confront sin. Confrontation will be only as successful as the trust we have built through hours of intent listening and understanding. Counselors must earn the right to confront, not just assume the right.

Personal Integrity

Part of earning the right to confront involves the therapeutic relationship; another part involves the counselor’s personal life. It is important to remember a warning Jesus gave: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye” (Matt. 7:1-5).

Thus, our first concern should always be to consider the grip of sin in our own lives as counselors and to seek to move closer to God in response to our sin. Before confronting others, we ought to confront ourselves. Before helping others confront their state of brokenness and need, we must confront our own.

Will This Help Establish a Healing Relationship?

Confronting sin can sometimes help establish a deeper, more complete healing relationship. A biblical proverb reminds us: “Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts, but profuse are the kisses of an enemy” (Prov. 27:6). Counselors who refuse to confront may limit the effectiveness of the counseling relationship.

Of course, every road has two ditches, and counselors can easily become too confrontive or too direct in their confrontation, as illustrated in some of the examples given earlier in this chapter. When counselors confront too often, too directly, or without establishing adequate trust, clients will usually distance themselves from the counseling process and progress will be inhibited.

I believe empathic confrontation is the best tool in striking this balance. Too often we separate empathy and confrontation, assuming they are mutually exclusive. But many forms of confrontation allow empathy and confrontation to coexist.

Empathic Confrontation

Client: I just get so tired of my husband’s behavior. He thinks he can do whatever he wants and I will be the good wife, staying at home, taking care of the kids, and abiding by his every desire. So I just refused. I left the kids a few hours and went shopping for myself. They may be a little young to be left on their own, but he didn’t have to get so angry about it. He has no right to treat me like property.

Counselor: It all feels pretty overwhelming right now.

Client: Yeah. What gives him the right?

Counselor: Uh-huh. And inside it creates this desire to rebel.

Client: Yeah. I don’t like it, but I feel it so strongly.

In this example, the counselor is able to be confrontive just by reflecting the content of the client’s speech. She is confronting herself, but the counselor is directing the flow of the conversation so she can recognize her thoughts and feelings. Empathic confrontation can also be used in the context of three techniques described earlier—silence, pondering, and questioning. With silence, the empathy must come through facial expressions. With pondering, the counselor adopts an attitude of trying to understand what the client is saying, though actually the counselor is more concerned about the client’s understanding what he or she is thinking and feeling. With questioning, the counselor is supportively helping the client find resources for determining what is right and wrong. In all these forms, empathic confrontation requires a collaborative stance. The counselor is not exercising power over the client but standing alongside as a joint pilgrim in the spiritual life.

The perfect example of empathic confrontation is found in Jesus, when he instructed his followers: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28-30). Jesus did not deny the burden of original sin; he had watched the effects of sin throughout human history and had even experienced the same temptations we experience (Heb. 4:15). Jesus empathically acknowledged that the burden of sin is heavy and creates weariness. This burden of sin is what A. W. Tozer calls “a crushing thing.”211 When our clients want to deny or excuse sin, we can empathize with them as we recall that we are all caught underneath this crushing load of original sin that affects personal behavior.

And Jesus is gentle and humble in heart. Jesus was not worried about positioning himself for greatness. He came to humble himself, to pour out his life, to be “obedient to the point of death” (Phil. 2:8). Counselors are called to the same gentleness and humility. Even when we must confront, we are to do it gently with a spirit of empathy and compassion. “My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves” (Gal. 6:1-3).

Facing the Challenges

The beginning of this chapter suggested a continuum with Albert Ellis and Jay Adams anchoring the scale at each end. Ellis believes that counselors need to help clients dismiss their ideas about sin and live as responsible hedonists. Adams believes that sin itself causes many (or most) emotional problems and that counselors will not be completely effective until they help their clients change patterns of sinful living. Both Ellis and Adams have made important contributions: Ellis has pointed out the self-destructive cycle of excessive guilt and shame; and Adams has stood against the social tide, boldly reminding us that sin matters. The position I am advocating is between these two extremes.

In this middle position, Christian counselors take sin seriously while emphasizing the original nature of sin. Sin is the poison that burst into a perfect creation through Adam and Eve’s transgression. It affects every human every day. To minimize or deny the power of sin is to close our eyes to the spiritual world that surrounds us. Because sin is original as well as personal, it does no good for our clients to wallow in guilt or shame. In fact, shame seems only to strengthen sin’s grip on our lives.

When a counselor confronts personal sin with direct censure, it often heightens the power differential already present in the counselor-client relationship; it sometimes adds to a client’s sense of shame; and it minimizes the generational and social effects of sin. Instead, we ought to emphasize the original nature and effects of sin as we position ourselves alongside clients who struggle with the same sins and temptations that we ourselves face. Even if we cannot empathize with the exact temptations our clients face, we should be able to recognize the sparkle and lure of sin as well as the emptiness and death that it produces. Empathic confrontation is an attempt not to minimize the significance of personal sin but to provide a safe, collaborative atmosphere that fosters genuine, honest self-exploration and discovery. When used properly, empathic confrontation through silence, pondering, or questioning helps a client honestly explore thoughts and feelings, and the change that results tends to be lasting change stemming from insight and growth.

This approach to confronting sin does not require self-disclosure during counseling sessions, but it does require personal honesty. Excessive self-disclosure confuses therapeutic boundaries and is unfair to clients; our clients do not need to know our personal struggles and temptations. However, as counselors we need to recognize and honestly confront our humanity, including our temptations and struggles. This requires a counselor to be genuine, devoted to spiritual growth and wisdom. So again we consider the six challenges described in chapter 1.

Challenge 1: Moving from Two Areas of Competence to Three

Psychologists who write about sin often have only one area of competence—psychology. They approach sin from a distinctly theoretical perspective and end up oversimplifying and misunderstanding the Christian notion of sin. For example, Weiner’s dichotomy between sin and sickness has broad appeal within the psychological community, but it is a simplistic dichotomy based on a partial understanding of the Christian notion of sin.212 Personal sin and sickness, from a Christian perspective, have the same point of origin in the Fall and cannot be separated as two extremes in a dichotomy. Dr. Weiner is a brilliant researcher, and his work on attribution theory has made a strong contribution to psychology. Unfortunately, by choosing the word sin to describe an attributional style, he perpetuates a wide-scale misunderstanding of sin within the psychological community.

Similarly, Mowrer’s integrity therapy is a worthy notion that oversimplifies sin. He is probably correct in noting that psychology has drifted away from an understanding of personal responsibility and accountability, and his plea for more emphasis on personal sin is admirable. But he tends to overlook the significance of original sin by focusing intently on personal sin.

To understand sin properly, psychologists and Christian counselors need the contributions of theologians and devotional writers. Christian spiritual writers throughout the past two millennia have emphasized the universality of human sin. If we take these writers seriously, we must confront some problems in a modern-day psychology that considers self-esteem a goal we can attain on our own with various self-help strategies. Until we honestly confront the problem of sin, we cannot know the miracle of grace and true self-acceptance. Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth-century philosopher, reminds us that “it is in vain that you seek within yourselves for the cure for your miseries. All your intelligence can only bring you to realize that it is not within yourselves that you will find either truth or good.”213 Using words that were strong even in the sixth century, Benedict’s (of Nursia) seventh step of humility is this: “The seventh step of humility is when we declare with our tongue and believe in our inmost soul that we are the lowliest and vilest of all, humbling ourselves and saying with the Psalmist, ‘But I am a worm, and I am the reproach of all, the outcast of the people.’ The Scriptures teach us that it is good to be humbled so that we may learn God’s commandments.”214

For many mental health professionals, Benedict’s prescription for humility may seem almost intolerable, but it is important to notice that Pascal and Benedict direct their words to all humans. We are all vile, broken, sick with the infection of sin. No, it’s not just personal sin; it is also the sin of our parents, our children, our coworkers, our employers, and our friends. When we break through the glossy look-good exterior, we see a common human core of loneliness and grief that we all know too well. We are sinners in a world broken apart by sin, living in relationships with other sinners. None of the science-fiction movies portraying life after nuclear disaster comes close to capturing the contrast of a perfect creation falling to become a world devastated by sin. Once we recognize the universality of sin, we stop trying to convince ourselves that we are good people; we stop trying to compute who is better than whom; and we fall helplessly at the feet of a loving Savior who graciously gives hope, meaning, purpose, and peace.

Challenge 2: Blurred Personal-Professional Distinctions

If Christian counselors are to take sin seriously in their professional work, we must also be devoted to understanding the impact of sin in our personal lives. The haunting words of Jesus remind us to take the log out of our own eye before considering the speck in our neighbor’s eye. How dare we confront sin in others’ lives without looking honestly at our own?

Though not all counselors agree about the role of personal therapy for counselors in training, I believe it is almost always a wise choice. Having been trained in a research-based university setting, I did not consider personal therapy during my training years. Sometime later, as I became aware of the ache of life, I engaged in a one-year journey in personal therapy. My therapist, psychodynamic in orientation, helped me understand many things. She was not directly confrontive, but she supported me as I explored my values and priorities, my feelings about past events and present relationships. Sometimes she pushed a bit harder than I would have liked: I remember hoping for an empathic Rogerian response once, and instead hearing, “That sounds like a narcissistic fantasy to me.” What did I learn through personal therapy? I learned about sin, not because my therapist ever talked about sin—I don’t recall her ever using the word—but because I was given a safe Christian environment in which to explore. First, I explored the sins of others: my parents, spouse, friends. As I submerged myself into the depths of self-pity, I found the loneliness that I had tried to mask with frantic activity and professional success. Discussing others’ sin was relatively easy, but my therapist seemed to think there was more to explore. Eventually, I was able to understand and acknowledge personal sin: my self-protective mechanisms, my self-centeredness, my arrogance.

Personal therapy was one of two experiences that radically transformed my clinical work. The second experience was auditing a course in spirituality during my first year as a faculty member at Wheaton College. For years I had been immersed in a psychological worldview that emphasized the goodness of humankind. I found it liberating to romp around in a different worldview, one that acknowledges human fallenness and need and then looks to God for help.

As these two experiences helped me see myself as a sinner in a fallen world, I became more empathetic, more collaborative, and less directive in my professional work. I became less interested in fixing symptoms than in exploring the deep aches that reside under layers of defense and self-protection in my clients. Though I still call myself a cognitive therapist, my colleagues tell me I am becoming more psychodynamic. Perhaps.

The point of these stories is to illustrate the fact that personal experiences in understanding sin affect the professional work of counselors. We bring our whole person into the counseling office.

Challenge 3: Expanded Definitions of Training

How then shall we train ourselves to understand the role of sin in human problems? Perhaps the greatest resource is not found in the fields of counseling and psychology but within the spiritual disciplines.

Too often we think of the disciplines as ends in themselves. Actually, they are only means to a spiritual end, a mechanism by which we receive God’s grace. Fasting, for example, should not produce the pride of accomplishment but the humility of greater insight. Fasting brings us face-to-face with our neediness. Richard Foster writes, “More than any other Discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us.”215 Fasting provides an opportunity for us to understand the nature and consequences of sin, and it “confirms our utter dependence upon God.”216 It can also be a useful mechanism of insight for many clients, but counselors should have firsthand experience with fasting before suggesting it to clients.

Meditating on Scripture can also help us understand the nature of sin. In Luke 18:13 we read of a penitent tax collector who beat on his chest and cried out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Counselors interested in personal spiritual training will find it helpful to meditate on this verse for a week or more.217

Here is one more suggestion. For every page we read in contemporary counseling books, including self-help books, perhaps we ought to read at least one page in the spiritual classics and one chapter of Scripture. There is a worldview implicitly assumed in modern culture, and we are wise to balance our exposure to it with the spiritual worldviews prevalent in centuries past. Our diet affects our health.

Challenge 4: Confronting Dominant Views of Mental Health

The contributions of psychology to contemporary culture have, in my opinion, been overwhelmingly positive. The research advances and innovative clinical theories and methods of psychology have revolutionized our understanding of behavior and mental processes. Given a chance to decide again, I would happily choose psychology as my profession.

However, my biggest criticism of psychology has undoubtedly been evident throughout this chapter. Specifically, I believe the worldview assumptions promoted by many well-meaning psychologists have done enormous damage to contemporary culture. Lining shelves in every bookstore throughout America we find books on self-esteem, self-affirmation, autonomy, and independence. At some point, we must stop and ask ourselves, Why do we care so much? Why are we so preoccupied with human worth?

A recent Newsweek article described the problem succinctly: “Ninety percent of Americans say they believe in God. Yet the urgent sense of personal sin has all but disappeared in the current upbeat style of American religion. . . . In earlier eras, ministers regularly exhorted congregations to humbly ‘confess our sins.’ But the aging baby boomers who are rushing back to church do not want to hear sermons that might rattle their self-esteem.”218

Perhaps our obsession with self-esteem is nothing more than a massive worldwide defense mechanism used to protect us from what we all instinctively know—that we are sinners living in a world of sin. We have become so familiar with the defense mechanism that the alternative of admitting sin seems dismal and depressing. But could it be that we have it all backward? Could it be that true freedom comes only after we have acknowledged our problem?

Christian counselors have an opportunity to confront dominant views of sin and provide an alternative view. In Scripture, admitting sin is not merely a dismal, depressing thing. Rather, it is a step toward understanding grace and finding opportunity for true celebration.

Challenge 5: Establishing a Scientific Base

With regard to this challenge, there is both good news and bad news. The good news is that there appears to be little or no relationship between religion and mental health. This is also the bad news.

It is good news because prominent psychologists have argued that religion makes people sick.219 Major literature reviews and meta-analyses provide no evidence for this conclusion.220 Religious people, including Christians, appear to be just as healthy as others despite their belief in sin. In fact, some researchers conclude there is a small positive correlation between religious beliefs and mental health.221

It is bad news because we might expect Christian beliefs, including beliefs in sin, repentance, and grace, to produce better adjustment and mental health than the beliefs of non-Christians. One possible explanation is that religious people have been grouped together in most studies, and not all religious experience is the same. For example, those with deeply committed, internalized religious views appear to be healthier than those who see religion as a means to an end.222 By combining these two groups in research studies, the beneficial effects of devout faith may be masked. Thus, we need more scientific studies with more careful distinctions between various religious views and perspectives.

As described in chapter 1, several outcome studies using religious forms of therapy have been reported, but none of the religious forms of therapy have challenged the underlying worldview implicit in traditional cognitive therapy.223 If our views of sin make a difference in the way we counsel, then we must do more than add Scripture verses or Christian images to a standard form of therapy before calling it Christian counseling.

Though an ambitious goal, we ultimately need Christian counseling that is based on a Christian view of sin and redemption.224 This model needs to be empirically validated by putting it head-to-head with traditional counseling models and testing its effectiveness.

It is daunting to see the thousands of books and journal articles published each year in psychology and counseling. Surely every topic must have been thoroughly covered in those many pages of scholarship! Actually not. Surprisingly little has been written about counseling and sin, and virtually nothing of a scientific nature has been reported.

Challenge 6: Defining Relevant Ethical Standards

Many of the same ethical challenges discussed in previous chapters apply to our understanding and confrontation of sin. In addition, there is a global ethical guideline that deserves special consideration here: do no harm. This is an ancient obligation for health-care providers, dating back to the Hippocratic oath. Whatever we do, it should be for the good of the client. In their zeal to confront sin, some Christian counselors forget that the good of their client is their first priority.

What If This Happened?

Mr. Stu K. Fingers is referred for counseling with Dr. S. Trey Tenarrow. The referral comes from Mr. Fingers’s employer, who says she is concerned that Stu may be drinking alcohol excessively. During the initial interview, Mr. Fingers denies using alcohol but admits to vague concerns involving anxiety and fear about the future. Dr. Tenarrow agrees to meet with Mr. Fingers for ten sessions with the understanding that the sessions will be confidential.

During the fifth session, Mr. Fingers admits that he is stealing money from the company, and he fears that his employer suspects him. Though his employer cannot prove that he has stolen money, she seems to be trying to find other reasons to dismiss him, including the false charges of alcoholism. Mr. Fingers appears angry toward his employer and fearful for the future, but he shows no evidence of remorse for stealing.

Dr. Tenarrow, feeling indignant and concerned about Stu’s lack of remorse, confronts Mr. Fingers immediately: “I believe you have reason to be afraid because what you are doing is wrong. You need to take responsibility for your actions here. You need to be honest with your employer. Your employer needs to know about this.” Mr. Fingers becomes defensive and leaves the session. He misses the remaining sessions and becomes increasingly anxious, wondering if Dr. Tenarrow plans to report him to his employer.

This is a difficult situation for a number of reasons, including ethical concerns about confidentiality, privacy, competence, and a counselor’s duty to protect others. Dr. Tenarrow went wrong when he forgot his first obligation to his client. When he learned about Mr. Fingers’s stealing, he became overwhelmed with his own emotions and responded out of his anger rather than considering the welfare of Mr. Fingers. A more reasoned response still might have involved confrontation but in a less threatening way. By threatening an already anxious man, Dr. Tenarrow introduced potential for harm. Reporting Mr. Fingers to his employer would have violated ethical standards and state law (in virtually all states) regarding confidentiality. To even hint at such a report is irresponsible and damaging.

Confronting sin, especially when done as direct censure, introduces power into the counseling relationship. At times this may be appropriate, but as the power differential increases, so must our sensitivity to the ethical implications of our words and actions.

A related ethical concern is that an awareness of sin can lead clients in one of two directions. For some, their natural response to understanding sin will be shame. For others, an awareness of sin leads them to an awareness of God’s grace, as Paul describes in his epistle to the Romans. If Christian counselors help their clients confront sin, they have an ethical obligation to also point them toward grace as a resolution to sin.225 Those who are left to wallow in shame will be worse because of their awareness of sin. Those who experience grace will be enriched by their awareness of sin. This will be discussed in greater detail later.

Summary

Psychologists have generally been uninterested in sin, preferring to ignore it or to discuss the effects of the concept of sin. Because internal attributions heighten feelings of guilt and depression in many situations, mental health professionals have tended to avoid sin as an explanation for emotional problems, a practice based on a misunderstanding of the Christian notion of sin. To practice competent Christian counseling, we must understand sin from theological and spiritual perspectives. Properly understood, the original nature of sin allows Christians to give up unproductive and shame-producing efforts to manage personal sin by willpower alone. Instead, we need transforming encounters with Christ.

In Christian counseling, sin can be confronted in humble and empathic ways that encourage spiritual growth more than guilt and shame. These methods include silence at strategic moments, pondering aloud inconsistencies in clients’ narratives, and questioning clients in order to understand their values of right and wrong. Understanding and changing the inner life of a client is more important than merely changing behavior. This calls Christian counselors to personal and spiritual disciplines that promote personal honesty, humility, and discernment.

Upon Reflection

Although the prayer chapter (chapter 3) has been the most controversial over the years, this chapter on sin has been the most favorably received. Students and colleagues have described how useful the chapter is, especially in thinking about the far-reaching implications of our human sin nature. I sometimes joke that we all have to be good at something; I guess I must be good at sin.

I’ve continued to think a good deal about the matter of sin since writing this book in the mid-1990s. The 2002 Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS) convention had the theme “Grace, Freedom, and Responsibility.” Having been asked to give the keynote address on the opening night of the conference, I set out to prepare a rousing talk on the topic of grace. But the more I researched the topic, the more I felt compelled to talk about sin instead. We can’t really understand grace without understanding sin, and vice versa. I titled the talk “Prelude to Grace,” which served as the impetus for a trade book titled Why Sin Matters: The Surprising Relationship between Our Sin and God’s Grace (Tyndale, 2004). More recently I wrote a book on the same topic for Christian counselors, titled Sin and Grace in Christian Counseling.226

Since Psychology, Theology, and Spirituality in Christian Counseling was first published, I have learned a number of things about sin and grace, three of which I will share in this update. First, the Christian doctrine of sin can have profound implications for how we understand empathy. Second, I will share a bit of my journey away from a strictly forensic view of sin and grace toward a more relational view. Finally, I will offer a few reflections about what I have learned being married to a Christian sociologist.

Sin and Empathy

Almost every graduate program in counseling or psychotherapy begins with a class in interviewing skills. Students learn the importance of empathy before they learn the various theories and techniques of counseling interventions. Having done this work for almost thirty years at this point, I am increasingly convinced of the crucial role of this early training in empathy, because empathy is one of the most important things we offer our clients.

If you want to be an effective counselor, you need to learn to establish good relationships with your clients, and if you want to establish good relationships, you need to become an expert at empathy. I suspect that if we could sneak a camera into the offices of the best counselors, we would see empathy in action, regardless of whether the counselors’ approach is psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, humanistic, or biblical. When it comes to the outcome of counseling, the therapeutic relationship appears to have about twice as much explanatory power as the techniques the counselor chooses to use, and one of the most essential dimensions of a good therapeutic relationship is empathy.227 This is depressing news to doctoral students, who spend five years and many thousands of dollars mastering therapeutic techniques only to find that effective relational skills are far more important than those techniques. (Still, I am a proponent of doctoral training for all sorts of reasons!)

The Christian doctrine of sin—properly understood—promotes therapeutic empathy. At this point you may have just dropped your book or e-book in surprise. What does empathy have to do with the doctrine of sin? Shouldn’t we suspend our understanding of sin so that we can accept a client unconditionally? Doesn’t a language of sin put the counselor in a role of judgment over the client’s choices?

No, not if we understand sin correctly. Our problem as Christian counselors is not talking too much about sin, nor is it talking too little about it. Our problem is our fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of sin.

We tend to think of sin as a series of specific deeds or thoughts instead of the state of our human condition. Both are true—sin is both act and state—but we emphasize act more than state in contemporary Christian life. If we reduce sin to a set of behaviors, then our tendency is to sit judgmentally with clients, especially those who have made a series of bad choices in their lives. But if we recognize sin as a state of brokenness—a shared condition that influences all humanity—then we sit with our clients as equals. Counselor and client are on the same journey, both pilgrims longing for creation to be made whole (see Romans 8). Empathy naturally flows from this view of sin. Put yourself in the counselor’s chair for the following conversation:

Client: I don’t know if I can ever forgive her. It’s been two years since the divorce, but I still wake up at night in this panicked state, thinking I’ve had a nightmare, only to realize that it really happened. She really left.

Counselor 1 thinks: His unforgiveness is sinful. No wonder he continues to struggle with despair and anxiety.

Counselor 1 says: It seems that you still have some unfinished business.

Now, keep this scenario in mind as you consider a second counselor in the same situation.

Counselor 2 thinks: Oh, the struggles we face in this fallen world! We all limp along, trying to do the best we can. How sad that he is still waking at night with these feelings of panic.

Counselor 2 says: It seems that you still have some unfinished business.

In both cases the client and counselors say exactly the same words, but because the inner thoughts of the counselors are very different I suspect that the client would experience counselor 2 as more empathic and understanding. This would come across in facial expressions, tone of voice, posture, and a general attitude of acceptance and understanding. Counselor 2 understands that sin is both act and state. Perhaps the fact that this client has not yet entered into the long, arduous process of forgiveness is sinful, but it also reflects the deep woundedness of being human and vulnerable and relational. All of us are broken. All long for healing. As we grasp the essence of this, we become wounded healers capable of deep empathic connections with our clients.

The Relational Nature of Sin and Healing

Writing Sin and Grace in Christian Counseling afforded me the chance to work with an editor, Gary Deddo, who holds a Ph.D. in systematic theology from the University of Aberdeen. In Gary’s doctoral dissertation, he explored the work of the great twentieth-century Swiss theologian Karl Barth. In the tradition of Barth, Gary helped me think more relationally about my notion of sin. And as he did, my understanding of theology became richer and more deeply meaningful. Christian theology moved out of the courtroom and into my living room. I’ll explain.

Until my interactions with Gary in 2006 and 2007, my understanding of sin was quite forensic; that is, it placed all of us in a divine court of law, found guilty of violating God’s commandments and awaiting sentencing. Then Jesus showed up and suffered the death penalty in our place. This view is not entirely wrong; much of Scripture speaks about the forensic implications of sin. But Barth’s theology reminds us that a Christian doctrine of sin and grace goes well beyond the courtroom and has much more to do with our relational nature and the living of everyday life. We can think of this in terms of a three-act play:

Act 1: A Relational God Creates Relational Human Creatures

From the first chapter of the Bible, in Genesis 1:26-27, we see the triune God create humans to bear the relational image of the persons of the Trinity, what Barth called an I-Thou dimension to the imago Dei.

Act 2: Sin Impedes Relationship

Two chapters later, in Genesis 3, we see the tragic relational consequences of sin. Now men and women feel shame and hide themselves. Our connection with God is strained too. All creation yearns to be restored and renewed.

Act 3: God Goes to Extreme Measures to Redeem What Is Broken

Throughout Scripture we see God persistently moving toward wayward humanity. Yes, Jesus shows up in the courtroom to atone for our sin, but he also shows up in the living room, around the dining-room table, in the bedroom and the boardrooms and the workshop, and in the garden and the playground and everywhere we may turn. The Incarnation provides the ultimate expression of how much God values relationship with us. God came to us, to live with us amid our struggle and confusion and pain. And in doing so, God demonstrated a relentless love for all creation.

From this theological perspective, the great tragedy of sin is not so much the death sentence we deserve as it is the breaking of covenant and sin’s disfiguring effects on our most intimate relationships. Grace, then, is not only Christ’s taking on our death sentence but also the amazing pursuing nature of God, who loves us more than we imagine. Christ is the ultimate expression of God’s vast love:

May you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. (Ephesians 3:18-19, NLT)

Theologian Anthony Hoekema describes how we are created to be in relationship with God, others, nature, and ourselves.228 Sin breaks all this, straining each of these relationships and causing us to be alienated and isolated. If one accepts this more relational theology of sin, then a relational view of healing follows, one founded on a triune God as the perfect expression of healthy relatedness and on the Incarnation as the ultimate expression of God’s desire to be in relationship with us. This relational view of healing calls us to reflect on the ways in which God’s distinct modes of being commune together in oneness—without division, domination, death, or destruction.

In the tradition of Barth, God can be described in terms of community-forming love and shared existence characterized by mutuality, service, and regard for others. The perfect fellowship within the Trinity is taken to represent the fullest declaration of life and the mission of God: to establish, maintain, and restore life in communion. God’s desire for relationship with and among the created order is the wondrous backdrop for the three-act play portrayed in the Scriptures. Perhaps it is this very desire that God impresses upon us as the imago Dei, calling us to live freely and gladly in relationships of harmony and love. With this shift toward a relational theology, we are almost certainly called to think deeply about its implications for our work as counselors.

The more we accept a relational perspective of God, sin, and the nature of persons, the more a relational view of healing and growth make sense. What if our relationships with others can be vehicles for redemption and sanctification just as surely as they can promote sin and destruction? If so, then effective counseling may not be so much about particular techniques or strategies as about the relationship that develops between counselor and client. It may be the relationship that heals, and not the various techniques that we spend years mastering in graduate school. As it happens, these sorts of relational views have been prominent throughout the history of psychology, from early psychodynamic traditions to some contemporary cognitive approaches.

Collective Sin

As I have mentioned before, I am married to a sociologist. For the first years of our marriage, Lisa was mostly an at-home mother, but when our children went to school, so did she. She was finishing her Ph.D. dissertation at the same time I was writing Psychology, Theology, and Spirituality in Christian Counseling. Since that time, we have had many fascinating conversations about psychology and sociology, often over meals that we prepare together. We both feel we are better at our respective disciplines because each of us has the other’s perspective to consider.

As a psychologist, my tendency is to view sin and grace from an individualistic lens. Even when discussing a relational view of sin and healing, I tend to think of one-on-one relationships. But sociologists think in terms of groups and collectives, which helps push me beyond my individualistic tendencies.

Here’s a radical thought: what if sin ought to be viewed collectively as well as individualistically? Throughout the Old Testament we see God saddened and joyful about his chosen people—the whole collective, not just the individuals. When unjust scales were being used in the marketplace, God was unhappy with the entire nation, not just with the guilty merchants.

If sin can be collective, then so can grace. God is interested in the saving of individual souls, of course, but he is also interested in restoring all creation to a place of harmony and balance and justice. Not only is grace a way to heaven but it also becomes a way of thinking about all of life. When Hoekema observes that we are disconnected from God, others, ourselves, and nature, then we must at least entertain the possibility that God’s grace is intended to ultimately restore every dimension of that brokenness. Lisa’s latest book, Walking Gently on the Earth, looks at how God’s grace helps us view our relationship with nature in fresh and redemptive ways.

Considering a collective view of grace provides a fresh lens through which to view Christian counseling. It is not only the healing of one life at a time but also participation in God’s grand redemptive presence in our broken world. This is work that emerges from God’s deep love for all creation, love that spans all human history and will persist through all eternity.

Final Thoughts

There was a day when I was quite critical of biblical counselors. I caricatured them as folks who worked like detectives, searching for sin in their clients’ lives and then convincing them to repent. It struck me as a bad approach to counseling. I now realize that these were gross misrepresentations of what biblical counselors actually do. The biblical counselors I respect most speak of “idols of the heart,” which refers to our propensity to put last things first and first things last. This, it turns out, is a very good understanding of sin and how it interferes with human flourishing. Sin ruptures relationship, causing us to wander away—sometimes far away—from God’s sustaining will for our lives. We can wander as individuals, and we can wander as communities. Christian counseling, like good biblical counseling, helps people find their way back to that great commandment that Jesus taught—to love God, and our neighbors as ourselves.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Michael J. Vogel for helping me conceptualize and write this update. Mike and I have worked together on several writing projects, including a chapter in the revised edition of Jones and Butman’s Modern Psychotherapies. I always appreciate Mike’s intelligence and godly wisdom.

Additional Reading

Mark R. McMinn, Sin and Grace in Christian Counseling (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press Academic, 2008).

Bibliography

Hoekema, Anthony A. Created in God’s Image. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986.

Lambert, Michael J. “Implications of Outcome Research for Psychotherapy Integration.” In Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration, edited by John C. Norcross and Marvin R. Goldfried, 94–129. New York: Basic Books, 1992.

McMinn, Mark R. Christian Counseling. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2006. Video.

McMinn, Mark R. Sin and Grace in Christian Counseling. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press Academic, 2008.

Norcross, John C., ed. Psychotherapy Relationships That Work: Therapist Contributions and Responsiveness to Patients. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Chapter 6

Confession

After several effective counseling sessions, Chris is finished counseling for the day. As she leaves the office and heads for her car, she reflects with satisfaction on her day. Mr. Gregory is feeling some relief from his headaches. Ms. Martinez is less depressed than she has been in months. And Jeremy is back at school after several days of a severe school phobia. It has been a good day.

As she pulls out of the parking lot, Chris entertains the question that visits every counselor from time to time. Why? Why are these people getting better? Is it because Chris is a good counselor? Is it because her cognitive-behavioral techniques are effective? Or is there some other reason?

I suspect the correct answer to Chris’s question is that all of the above are true. Her counseling skills, her theoretical model, and a plethora of other factors all contribute to the successes that Mr. Gregory, Ms. Martinez, and Jeremy are feeling. As discussed earlier, one of the tasks facing researchers and counselors is to figure out the nature of these other factors, often called nonspecific factors.

Perhaps one of the nonspecific factors that helps make counseling effective is its confessional nature. In counseling offices clients unload burdens of pain and well-kept secrets, often secrets that they have never verbalized to anyone before. When counselors respond in a caring, nonjudgmental way, clients feel relief. They leave with a lighter step than when they came.

The idea of confession has not enjoyed popularity in contemporary American society. Even among Roman Catholics, where the sacrament of penance has been valued for centuries, the practice of confession is waning. “According to the latest survey, in 1989, only 40 percent of Catholics confess their sins at least twice a year.”229 As the practice of confession has declined, the prominence of psychotherapy and counseling has increased. Americans have exchanged one form of confession for another, preferring to see a counselor for an emotional problem rather than a pastor or priest for a spiritual problem. Sharon Hymer, a psychotherapist, writes: “The decline in religious belief and church attendance in our culture has forced individuals to look elsewhere for confession. . . . With the disappearance of traditional avenues of confession, psychotherapy has arisen to provide an outlet for the confessional impulse.”230

Though not all counseling is confessional in nature, much is. Thus, Christian counselors need to think carefully about the confessional aspects and implications of counseling. As counselors have been asked to listen to their clients’ confessions, some have exaggerated their role as priest and reduced complex emotional problems to simple formulas of personal sin. They emphasize repentance and behavioral change without properly understanding the relational nature of counseling and their spiritual need for humility. Other counselors have rebelled against the confessional nature of counseling altogether and have tried to teach their clients that there is nothing to confess: “I’m okay, and you’re okay.” Between these two extremes is a place for competent Christian counseling, where confession is humbly accepted as a valid part of the counseling process and where the counseling relationship models the grace and kindness of Christ.

Foundations

Psychology

The few published articles about psychology and confession are written from a variety of perspectives, sampled briefly here.

Psychological Effects of Confession

Some authors have attempted to understand the effects of confession by using the tools of psychological science. Two examples of these studies include testing the impression-management effects of public confession and testing the physiological effects of private confession.

Bernard Weiner and his colleagues reported five role-playing studies to test the effects of public confession (not in a church setting).231 They found that public confession, especially confession that is not prompted by an accusation, makes observers less angry and causes them to judge the offender as less culpable than offenders who do not confess. It is difficult to generalize the results of these studies to counseling practice because the private confession of counseling differs in significant ways from the public confession studied by the researchers. Much more research is needed before counselors understand how their views of their clients are affected by the types of confession used by the client.

James Pennebaker and colleagues have investigated the physiological effects of disclosing personal and traumatic experiences.232 Among other measures, they used skin conductance as a measure of anxiety. Those who disclosed high levels of personal information showed lower levels of skin conductance (less anxiety) after disclosing personal information than they did after talking about innocuous topics. Thus, confession appears to have physiological benefits. However, it is important to remember that the same findings were not observed among those more cautious in their disclosing style. Thus, it is difficult to translate these findings into clear principles for counseling. One possible implication is that people who naturally disclose more in counseling will be less prone to psychosomatic ailments than those who are naturally more cautious. This is supported by another of Pennebaker’s studies showing that those who expressed grief after the loss of a spouse had fewer physical ailments than those who tried to deal with their grief privately.233

Confessional Nature of Psychotherapy

If confession has psychological benefits, as it appears to, then how can confession be introduced into counseling? This probably requires little effort on the part of the counselor because confession is a natural, automatic part of counseling. Counselors, just by being available to clients, hear confessions much as Roman Catholic priests have for centuries. Both counselors and priests help hurting people seek restoration and the resolution of problems such as anger, guilt, and shame.234 Counseling and religious confession both reflect the rhythm described in chapter 2: a person recognizes and admits need and is then drawn into a healing relationship through the understanding or absolving words of a priest or counselor. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung observed that confession to a therapist naturally produces relief because after people confess they feel reunited with the human community.235

Despite the confessional nature of counseling, there are distinctions between religious confession and counseling. Religious confession assumes moral error on the part of the confessor, whereas counseling usually assumes “a larger problem that is unconsciously motivated.”236 For example, if a client admits hitting his wife, a priest will focus on confession of moral error, penance, and forgiveness. A counselor, in contrast, might focus more on helping the client explore his anger about being abused himself as a child, his misconceptions about gender roles, and his current struggles for control in his marriage. The priest focuses on the immediate moral problem, whereas the counselor looks for a psychological context to help explain why the man hit his wife. Both are concerned with changing the behavior, but the methods are different. Confession assumes moral violation, and counseling assumes moral neutrality.

Although this distinction between the methods of confession and counseling is often valid, we must be careful to recognize that it is not an entirely adequate distinction because it returns us to the sin-versus-sickness dichotomy criticized in chapter 5: priests attribute problems to sin, and counselors attribute problems to sickness. Yet Christian counselors often find themselves somewhere in the middle, believing that both sin and sickness contribute to dysfunctional human behavior. Because of this, Christian counseling should not always be morally neutral; moral discourse ought to be included in some counseling situations.237

Several religious psychotherapists have recently made similar recommendations, suggesting that counseling can and should, at times, have a moral dimension. Rather than perpetuating acceptance, which Richard Erickson describes as an attitude that communicates that all things are acceptable, Erickson believes psychotherapists should introduce a moral dimension in counseling by assisting clients in their desire for restoration: a process of confessing wrong, making amends, and taking responsibility for future actions. Psychologist Allen Bergin seems to agree with Erickson. In 1980, Bergin published a landmark article entitled, “Psychotherapy and Religious Values.”238 In the article he described two broad classes of values that are prominent in the mental-health fields. Theistic values are based on the presupposition that human morality is best understood in light of God’s existence and revelation. Clinical-Humanistic values are based on the presupposition that humans are supreme and in charge of their own destiny. One of the differences between theistic and clinical-humanistic values involves the way confession is handled. Bergin writes of theistic values in mental health: “Personal responsibility for own harmful actions and changes in them. Acceptance of guilt, suffering, and contrition as keys to change. Restitution for harmful effects.”239 This value statement suggests that sin is sometimes an accurate and helpful attribution for many human problems. In contrast, he describes clinical-humanistic values this way: “Others are responsible for our problems and changes. Minimizing guilt and relieving suffering before experiencing its meaning. Apology for harmful effects.”240 This value statement suggests that psychological sickness, not sin, causes human problems. Thus, one of the primary distinctions between theistic and clinical-humanistic values seems to hinge on the way theistic counselors deal with clients’ desires to confess wrongdoing.241

Should Christian counselors view clients’ confessions as sin and emphasize the need for repentance and restitution, or should they view clients’ confessions as resulting from sickness and emphasize the need for psychological insight and self-understanding? As discussed in the previous chapter, this dichotomy is too stark. The best counseling approach is found somewhere between these two extremes. The challenge for Christian counselors is to look at a broad psychological context for moral errors, which has traditionally distinguished counselors from clerics, and yet not slip into a moral relativism that discounts the significance of sin and the healing power of remorse and confession. This challenge is illustrated in the following case.

What If This Happened?

R. E. Morse comes for counseling to deal with her depression. But in the midst of the third session, she unloads her deepest secret. Shortly after she had married her husband, she had a brief affair with a former boyfriend. She has never told anyone until now.

Her counselor has a choice. Which attitude should she use in talking with Ms. Morse?

Attitude A: “This is a tragic event, and I can understand why it has been difficult to talk about. I want to help you think through the implications of the affair, including ways it has hurt you and others, how it can help you learn about yourself, and your need for restitution and reconciliation. The ultimate goals should be growth—that you understand yourself and others better—and forgiveness—that you experience God’s forgiveness, forgive yourself, and be reconciled to those affected by your past attitudes and actions.”

Attitude B: “This is a bad event, and we need to understand what deep emotional needs you were trying to fill with this affair. But there is little use in yelling at yourself or condemning yourself. Perhaps you were experiencing ambivalent feelings after your marriage, longing for intimacy that you missed as a child, and your affair was a way to cope with the loneliness and confusion you felt inside. Several years have passed, and no one appears to have been hurt by your actions, except that you are depressing yourself with self-condemning thoughts. It is time to be nice to yourself, understand the motives that compelled you toward this affair, and move ahead with your life.

Whereas attitude B reflects the belief that Ms. Morse acted out sexually and has been depressed because of psychological sickness, attitude A also emphasizes the healing nature of guilt, remorse, and restitution.

Guilt: A Concept Related to Confession

The case of Ms. Morse raises another question that is related to confession: should guilt be encouraged or discouraged?242 Though guilt has been theoretically linked to psychological disturbance, the relationships among religion, guilt, and disturbance have been debated vigorously. Guilt has sometimes been perceived as a harmful and self-defeating emotion accompanying religious faith.243 At other times, guilt is perceived as an emotion that reflects empathy for others and leads to useful reparative actions.244 Recent research suggests there may be a place for healthy guilt.

In a 1991 study, intrinsically religious participants (those whose faith is central to their lives) scored higher on a guilt-proneness scale than extrinsically religious participants (those who evaluate their religious faith in light of their other needs). Despite their proneness to guilt feelings, intrinsic participants did not report more depression or less existential well-being than extrinsic participants.245 Similarly, June Price Tangney and her colleagues have reported several studies suggesting that proneness to guilt, unlike proneness to shame, is unrelated to psychological maladjustment.246 In fact, recent evidence suggests that those most prone to shame-free guilt are less likely than others to experience anger, hostility, and resentment.247

In an analog study involving eighty-three college students, two colleagues and I presented participants with a continuous narrative containing three scenarios in which they first committed a dishonest act and then felt compelled to confess what they had done.248 The final scenario contained a manipulation of grace or no-grace, in which half of the participants were forgiven for their act and half were not. Following each scenario, participants were tested for feelings of guilt and related behavioral and emotional responses. Those students who were highly committed to their religious faith were more prone to guilt and more inclined to confess their misdeeds than other participants; at the same time, the highly committed students were less prone to other negative emotions, such as depression, anxiety, and hostility. We concluded that some forms of guilt may be beneficial.

Several religious psychologists have noted a positive role for certain forms of guilt. S. Bruce Narramore distinguishes between constructive sorrow—a remorseful response leading to confession and reconciliation—and self-focused guilt (similar to what Tangney calls shame)—a response that damages one’s self-image.249 P. Scott Richards exhorts counselors to make a similar distinction in their work with religiously devout students: “Thus, although religiously devout students may be more prone to guilt, counselors should not assume that this is dysfunctional for them. In their desire to help clients feel better, practitioners have at times indiscriminately attempted to neutralize clients’ guilt without giving sufficient consideration to whether the guilt was an appropriate emotional response to actual wrongdoings.”250

Thus, guilt is not always a negative phenomenon. Guilt helps us understand and adhere to moral standards, supports our sense of order in the universe, and motivates us to reconcile with one another.251 Guilt not only sometimes prevents blaming, resentment, and anger, but it can also lead to a greater understanding of God’s grace. When Israel’s King David committed adultery and murder, he felt deep remorse. He wrote: “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment” (Ps. 51:2-4). David’s sorrowful remorse led him to marvel at God’s grace rather than fall into a state of excessive self-deprecation. He later concluded: “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow” (Ps. 51:7).

King David knew a simple truth that we have often overlooked in contemporary society. He knew that proper guilt and confession is the only path to forgiveness and restoration. Today we prefer to blame or excuse or even to wallow in shame. David Belgum, a theologian and counselor, observes: “Our generation may well be characterized as an age of irresponsibility. Rather than accepting our guilt for misdeeds, we rationalize our way out, blaming ‘conditioned’ causes; we attribute our behavior to our environment or heredity, or to our faulty training or lack of need-gratification.”252

King David took a different route. He confessed his guilt and embarked on the path to reconciliation with God. When we deny or disqualify guilt from counseling, we rob our clients of opportunities for godly sorrow, repentance, and restoration.

Christian Theology

Confession and the Sacrament of Penance

The Christian church has always been interested in confession, but the means of confession has changed throughout the past two millennia. We know from Scripture (see Acts 19) that a form of public confession was practiced by the early church. Confession continued as an important part of early Christianity, as evidenced by written confessions of spiritual leaders. Several centuries after Christ, Saint Augustine and Saint Patrick each wrote their confessions, Augustine around A.D. 397 and Patrick around A.D. 460. Their confessions are illuminating combinations of autobiography, confessions of faith, and confessions of sin.253

Augustine’s Confessions and his other writings served as a partial foundation for scholasticism, a movement that attempted to analyze faith intellectually. Scholasticism grew throughout the twelfth century, and with it came the doctrine and sacrament of penance. Scholastics believed three things were necessary for repentance: feelings of remorse, verbal confession, and restitution. These three tenets of the doctrine of penance seem reasonable, but the practice of repentance soon became externalized—a matter of fulfilling the church’s rules rather than a matter of the heart. When John Calvin wrote his Institutes of the Christian Religion in the mid-1500s, he sharply criticized the scholastics’ doctrine of penance and the related practice of buying indulgences from the Catholic Church. Long before the days of Prozac, Calvin recommended medication for the scholastics: “These men are fit to be treated by drugs for insanity rather than to be argued with.”254 In contrast to the doctrine of penance, Calvin argued that confession should be offered secretly to God, and when public confession was necessary, it should be a voluntary act of contrition before other humans.

Calvin and the other Reformers called Christians to a personal encounter with God. Before the Reformation, church members approached the Catholic priest as a mediator to God. Thus, the natural place to go for confession was to the priest. As a direct result of the Reformation, Protestants now believe God can be approached directly, without an intervening cleric. Thus, confession is personal, secret, and directly addressed to God.

This Protestant view of confession closely parallels the view of sin presented in chapter 5. If our human problem were limited to personal sin, then salvation could be found by confessing our personal sins to God or one of God’s representatives, such as a priest. But because our human problem also involves original sin, our confession must be more general than acknowledging personal acts of rebellion. We must confess our chronic human need for God. Even on days when we think we violate no scriptural commands, we are still plagued by human frailties. The spirit of confession cannot be captured by the doctrine of penance; confession is a humble and contrite posture that we should assume continually in the presence of God. Martin Luther put it this way: “When I admonish men to come to confession, I am simply urging them to be Christians.”255

Having argued for the Protestant view of confession, it is also important to remember that the Roman Catholic views of confession and penance also have merit.256 First, regular confession forces us to confront our sin. In the midst of everyday life, it is easy to overlook or minimize our misdeeds. Those who regularly confess wrongdoing may take sin more seriously than those who don’t. Second, the act of penance—paying a price for sin—produces an awareness of the seriousness of sin. A sloppy understanding of Reformed theology produces a carelessness toward sin: “Oh well, I will always be forgiven.” Penance fights this tendency by imposing consequences for sin. Third, the burden of guilt is lifted as forgiveness is granted during the sacrament of penance. This is profoundly liberating for some people.

Confession and Scripture

Given the historical turbulence regarding confession, it is important to look to Scripture to understand the proper practice of confession. Scripture describes two common uses of confession.257 The first is the confession of faith, publicly declaring our allegiance to God. This is seen throughout the Bible. When Jesus sent out his disciples to spread the gospel, he cautioned them that they would be scorned and rejected, noting, “Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven” (Matt. 10:32-33). Jesus knew that some people would confess him and some would not. Later, the apostle Paul described confession of faith as an important goal of Christ’s work of salvation: “Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11). Implicit in the confession of faith is a recognition of our need for God. We cannot reach God on our own—we must fall humbly at God’s feet and ask for help.

Second, confession of sin is described throughout Scripture. When we sin, we are instructed to confess in various ways, depending on the circumstances involved. We must freely confess our sin to God. While reflecting on the goodness of God’s forgiveness, King David remembered, “Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the guilt of my sin” (Ps. 32:5). And in 1 John 1:8-9 we are reminded of the same principle: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

In addition to confessing to God, we are also obliged to confess sins to one another, especially those we have harmed. Jesus addressed this in the Sermon on the Mount when he told people not to offer sacrifices to God until relationship conflicts have been resolved with one another. “First be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift” (Matt. 5:24). James gave more general instructions that encourage us to share our weaknesses and failures in the context of a loving, praying, supportive Christian community. “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective” (James 5:16).

What If This Happened?

Now that Ms. Morse has confessed her adultery to her counselor, she wonders if she should also tell her husband. She looks to her counselor for advice.

This is a difficult situation, and no advice should be given reflexively without considering the implications and nuances of the specific situation. But these admonitions of Scripture should be remembered in formulating a response. Even if he does not know it, Ms. Morse’s husband has been hurt, and the route to reconciliation may require Ms. Morse to confess her affair.

Scripture also refers to confessing sin to spiritual leaders. David confessed his sin to the prophet Nathan (2 Sam. 12); people confessed their sins and were baptized by John the Baptist (Matt. 3); and the believers at Ephesus confessed their sins to the apostle Paul (Acts 19). The scriptural practice of confession to spiritual leaders is always voluntary, an act of free will for the purpose of spiritual restoration. In contrast, the doctrine of penance that Calvin criticized so sharply had become obligatory: people confessed as part of a mechanized process of repentance.

Finally, we are instructed in Scripture to confess our sins to a local church body under some circumstances. If a sin affects an entire community of believers, then the sin is sometimes to be confronted or confessed publicly (see the example faced by the Corinthian church in 1 Cor. 5 and the resolution alluded to in 2 Cor. 2:6-8). In general, confession may be limited to the scope of those directly affected by the sin.

Throughout Scripture and church history, we see two common themes of confession. One is the confession of personal sin, sometimes done in the presence of a priest, the offended party, a trusted friend, or a community of believers, and sometimes offered secretly to God. The other is a general confession of faith—admitting the futility of our own attempts to grasp for meaning and acknowledging our need for God. Both types of confession require humility.

Spirituality

Confession requires humility, and humility is not easy. Often one’s initial exposure to spiritual disciplines makes confession more difficult because we become so enthralled by the spiritual life that we mistakenly assume spirituality is a path to happiness rather than humility. There is often a sense of exhilaration, as if life’s struggles have been immediately and permanently resolved by several weeks or months of spiritual disciplines. Confession is not appealing for those who see spiritual growth as a path to greater happiness and exuberance because confession requires us to acknowledge the chronic ache of human existence and our utter inability to transcend our sin nature with willpower alone. C. S. Lewis wrote that a “Christian’s nostril is to be continually attentive to the inner cesspool.”258 The smell of sin is not a pleasant one, but it is a necessary one for Christians serious about spiritual growth.

We soon learn that the disciplines are not an end in themselves. They are not a panacea, and life’s struggles continue. God calls us to a disciplined life not in order to make us feel good but to transform us by giving us a clearer understanding of ourselves and of God’s character. Spiritual development causes us to be increasingly saddened by fallen human character, grieved by the effects of sin in the world, and surprised and overwhelmed by God’s redemptive grace. This is the essence of humility—seeing ourselves and God accurately.

Humility must be distinguished from self-abasement. Jeremy Taylor, a seventh-century scholar, wrote that “humility does not consist in criticizing yourself, or wearing ragged clothes, or walking around submissively wherever you go. Humility consists in a realistic opinion of yourself, namely, that you are an unworthy person.”259 We are unworthy but not worthless. There is no value in seeing ourselves as utterly evil and loathsome. Rather, humility requires us to look at ourselves honestly and recognize that we are a convoluted mixture of motives, of good and bad, pure and impure, altruism and egocentrism. Humility means we understand human strengths as well as human weaknesses. We must not forget human potential and goodness because somewhere deep inside is always a glimmering urge to confess, to be restored and reconciled in meaningful relationships, to do what is right and abandon what is wrong. Dallas Willard calls this our “innate integrity.”260 We inwardly long to confess our sins to one another, to make restitution for our sins, and to find forgiveness. Confession draws us out of our secluded darkness and brings us into the light. Yet, we often resist inner urges for confession and forgiveness.

Resisting Confession

Confession involves sacrificing our good image for the sake of truth or a relationship with another. Because confession has a cost, we often resist it. There are at least two forms this resistance can take.

For some people, resistance takes the form of avoiding the spiritual life. If coming to Christ involves admitting need, then they prefer to stay away, surrounding themselves with a cloak of self-sufficiency and independence. Those who admit no need have nothing to confess.

For others, the spiritual life is appealing and rich, and the community of Christian believers is rewarding and fulfilling. Soon their spirituality becomes a source of secret pride. When churches are filled with people nursing spiritual pride, the blessings of community are overshadowed by ugly competition. Rather than being a place where Christians confess to one another, the church sometimes becomes a place where we compete with one another, trying to impress others with our spiritual maturity. Confession is difficult in this context because to confess is to shatter our fantasized persona of perfection.

What If This Happened?

Mr. and Ms. Christensen are seeing a counselor for help with their marriage. Mr. Christensen is a deacon in the church, a pillar in the community, and an inattentive chauvinist at home. His success in life, his intentional practice of spiritual disciplines, and the respect he gets from others have made him a proud man. He resists any counseling efforts that suggest he may share some blame in the marriage problems.

Some would like to think of Mr. Christensen as a strong-willed hypocrite. Perhaps it is more accurate to see him as a vulnerable pilgrim, trying to ease his inner pain by avoiding blame and seeking approval from others.

The Christensens’ counselor is wise enough to see Mr. Christensen’s pain beneath his defensive and oppositional style. The counselor does two essential things: She supports Mr. Christensen by being accepting and nurturing, and she refuses to shield him or excuse him from the pain associated with his poor choices at home. As he feels accepted by his counselor, he becomes more honest with himself and his spouse. The pain of confrontation and insight is profound at times, but Mr. Christensen grows through the counseling experience.

Both those who resist confession by avoiding the spiritual life and those who resist because of secret pride are in need of the same two things that Mr. Christensen’s counselor fostered: support and pain. Support draws lonely and isolated people into community. Pain draws those caught in the grip of self-sufficiency to a new understanding of need. Pain also weans us from our spiritual pride and allows us to look to God rather than reputation for strength.

Support and pain are both present in the spiritual life. In the sixteenth century, Saint John of the Cross wrote The Dark Night of the Soul, which describes how God walks with us on the path of spiritual growth. At first, we feel supported by God’s presence—“nurtured and caressed by the Spirit” as we enter into the joy of knowing God.261 We pray fervently, try new spiritual disciplines, and draw close to God. But with this newly discovered spiritual growth, spiritual impurities sprout and grow as well. Soon we become proud, like Mr. Christensen in the preceding example. Saint John of the Cross writes, “Such persons become too spiritual. They like to speak of ‘spiritual things’ all the time. They become content with their growth. They would prefer to teach rather than to be taught. They condemn others who are not as spiritual as they are. They are like the Pharisee who boasted in himself and despised the publican who was not as spiritual as he.”262 People at this stage of spiritual development fear confession because it will hurt their image. For this problem, God has a solution, though not a highly desirable one from a human perspective. The pain of the dark night of the soul draws us closer to God by removing impurities from our character.

Speaking of those on the spiritual path, Saint John continues, “There will come a time when God will bid them to grow deeper. He will remove the previous consolation from the soul in order to teach it virtue and prevent it from developing vice.”263 During this dark night, when the support and happiness we initially associated with spirituality has vanished, our character is gradually transformed. We learn to think less of ourselves and our religious piety and more about God’s greatness. We learn about our spiritual pride and find paths to greater maturity. Humility—the capacity to see ourselves and God accurately—is the proper posture for confession, and our capacity for humility is forged in times of darkness, in confronting failures and weaknesses.

Psychological and Spiritual Health

An accurate understanding of sin and confession does lead to humility and hope, not despair and shame. This is an essential distinction for Christian counselors because so many of those we work with feel shame instead of hope. They sometimes resist confession, assuming it will only bring greater shame.

When faced with the reality of fallen human nature, we come to a fork in the road and are left with three choices (shown in figure 5). One choice is to do nothing, to stand paralyzed in a state of shame and proclaim our worthlessness. Many people who seek counseling come in this condition. They need help to move ahead. The second choice is to confess our fallen nature, find ways of making restitution when appropriate, accept forgiveness, and be restored to healthy relationships. Confession brings psychological growth and spiritual renewal. It is “a means of healing and transforming the inner spirit.”264 Notice that this route takes time, humility, and diligence. The third choice is to seek comfort through means other than confession. For example, we can feel better by learning to tell ourselves that our faults really are not too bad or by finding unconditional acceptance in a counselor. Rather than confessing and seeking forgiveness, we attempt to ease our conscience through psychological tricks that affect our ways of thinking and feeling. This is a secularized version of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace: “No contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin.”265

Some types of counseling, religious or not, are legitimate models of confession and forgiveness. At the end of these counseling relationships is the profound awareness, “I am forgiven.” Other types of counseling are mostly ways of tricking people into feeling good again. At the end of these counseling relationships is the self-focused proclamation, “I am okay.” Both routes make people feel better, but only confession brings humility and spiritual growth as well as emotional well-being.

By listing human nature as the problem in figure 5, I am not suggesting that all psychological problems are the direct result of personal sin. Many clients have problems that are more related to original sin than to personal sin. They carry scars of abandonment, rejection, abuse, and ridicule. They have learned faulty ways of adapting to life’s demands or relating to others. But all psychological problems (as well as all other problems) are the direct or indirect result of fallen human nature. The questions we struggle with as counselors are, How do we understand the problem of fallenness? and How do we help our clients cope with the realities of living as fallen humans in a fallen world? Even when confession does not involve confessing specific misdeeds, an attitude of humility requires us to confess our inadequacy before God and our need for community with God and others.

Which counseling styles move clients toward healthy confession and forgiveness? This depends on the personal humility of the counselor and the nature of the counseling relationship more than the theory or specific technique the counselor uses. Some therapists—whether using behavioral, cognitive, psychodynamic, family systems, or other theories—are able to incorporate a worldview of humility and confession in their clinical work. Others are not. Some neglect confession. Some emphasize confession while neglecting to be humble. Others encourage confession and still remain humble, leading their clients to greater insight and maturity. To evaluate counseling styles that promote healing confession, we return to the same three questions asked in previous chapters. As each of the three questions is considered, it will be applied to the counseling case described here:

What If This Happened?

Ron was sexually and emotionally abused by his parents during his childhood years. During adolescence he withdrew from his parents, began using drugs heavily, and was sexually irresponsible and promiscuous. In the mid-1970s he returned to college, became a Christian through a campus-ministry group, finished an undergraduate degree in economics, and started working. He has found it difficult to maintain steady employment over the past fifteen years, often because of personality conflicts with his supervisors. Ron has been married twice, divorced twice, and is now living on his own. His two children live with their mothers. He seeks counseling because of chronic feelings of emptiness and depression.

Ron is considering three counselors. Which should he choose?

Counselor A believes Ron’s problems are caused by his childhood sexual abuse, which he has never dealt with adequately. As a child, Ron learned to think of himself as helpless and powerless, even over his own body. In counseling, he needs to be empowered, to explore and express his anger, and to rid himself of the guilt and shame he has carried with him for many years. What happened to Ron is not his fault. He needs to replace his shame with appropriate anger toward his abusers.

Counselor B believes Ron’s problems are bitterness and a lack of repentance. Although Ron has been a Christian for more than fifteen years, he has not forgiven his parents and taken responsibility for his own immoral choices. Ron’s bitterness toward his parents is obvious in his conflictual relationships with supervisors and his inability to stay married. Ron needs to confess his bitterness, forget what lies behind, and press on toward greater obedience and spiritual maturity.

Counselor C believes the sexual abuse that Ron experienced as a child is a tragic example of sin. Because of the abuse, Ron has carried shame feelings and has made poor choices for many years. To be liberated from his prison of shame, Ron must experience a new type of relationship with his counselor. In the context of a safe, nonjudgmental, honest counseling relationship, Ron will be free to explore his thoughts and feelings openly and to grieve the loss of a childhood. With time, and in the context of this safe relationship, Ron will be free to consider ways he has hurt others. Though not a sexual abuser, Ron has caused others pain just as his parents caused him pain. With this awareness, Ron will better understand his need for God’s gracious redemption and will be freed from his prison of shame.

Counselor A and counselor C have much in common. Both value and emphasize a well-crafted, safe therapeutic relationship. Both believe Ron needs time and comfort to explore the losses of his past. They also have one important difference: Counselor A believes Ron can best replace his shame by understanding his anger toward his abusers, whereas counselor C believes Ron can best replace his shame with a sense of empathy for his abusers and by working through his grief about the past.

Will This Help Establish a Healthy Sense of Self?

Counselor A

Counselor A neglects the role of confession in counseling. Counselor B emphasizes confession but does so in an aggressive manner that emphasizes power more than humility. Counselor C humbly supports Ron’s need for confession in the context of a healing counseling relationship.

Using the scheme presented in figure 5, counselor A wants to bring Ron to the point where he believes, “I am okay.” Counselor A sees no need for confession or forgiveness because Ron is the one who has been victimized. After seeing counselor A, Ron may feel relief from his depression, but his sense of identity may lack the humility that characterizes the spiritual life. If depression is anger turned inward, as Sigmund Freud believed, then counselor A will help Ron turn his anger outward where it belongs. But then what? Are abuse survivors destined for a life of anger? Each time Ron thinks of his parents, he may boil inside with anger. His anger frees him from the shame that has disabled him for years and may represent legitimate psychological progress, but he still lacks the empathy, insight, and humility of true spirituality.

Ron may correctly look to his childhood abuse as an explanation for what went wrong in his life. The trauma of abuse inevitably leaves emotional scars and psychological dysfunction. But what can be said of Ron’s own choices that have hurt himself and others? Ron, like his parents, was damaged by a previous generation, and, like his parents, he has made choices that hurt the next generation. Yet the only confession that counselor A encourages Ron to consider is that of his parents’ sin. This approach does not produce an accurate sense of self. Instead, it produces an identity of victimization that not only perpetuates anger, pride, and bitterness but also inhibits insight.

Counselor B

Counselor B makes none of these errors but neglects humility. Using the scheme presented in figure 5, counselor B wants to bring Ron to the point where he believes, “I am forgiven.” This is the proper goal for Christian counseling, but counselor B may not accomplish the goal as successfully as intended. By minimizing the impact of childhood sexual abuse and confronting Ron with his personal sin of bitterness, counselor B ignores the effects of shame in Ron’s life. Indeed, this approach may add to Ron’s shame. If Ron complies and appears to improve in counseling, it may be due only to Ron’s desire to please and earn approval from his counselor. If Ron confesses his sin of bitterness and his counselor seems pleased with Ron’s confession, then Ron will feel less depressed, and both will call the counseling successful. But is it really successful? Does Ron really feel forgiven by God, or does he feel okay because he has earned his counselor’s approval?

Counselor B’s approach resembles the sacrament of penance that the Reformers found objectionable. The counselor, an agent of God, hears the confession of a sinner, and the sinner is granted forgiveness. In centuries past, this arrangement gave the priest too much power, power that ultimately corrupted the effectiveness of the church and led to the religious revolt we call the Reformation. In this case, however, counselor B carries even more power than the priest who hears confession because the counselor not only accepts the confession but also points out the sin. By teaching Ron about the sin of bitterness and eliciting a confession and penitent attitude, counselor B assumes the problem is solved. But the power dynamic in the counseling relationship is overlooked. If Ron has confessed to please his counselor, it is not out of true understanding and conviction. Confession, unlike seeking approval, requires an honest look at oneself.

It is a mistake to assume that eliciting confession is a quick process. Many human burdens are buried beneath years of pain and layers of defense and will be understood only in the context of a safe counseling relationship that has lasted several weeks or months. “Confessions can be viewed as a multilayered reflection of self.”266 By being confrontive, counselor B may elicit an initial confession but will slam the door on honest self-exploration and further disclosure.

Counselor C

Counselor C has the right idea. Counselor C believes that more than just admitting personal sin, confession involves acknowledging and grappling with our human limitations and our ache for intimacy with God and others. It is the confession of faith, which requires us to humbly acknowledge our need for God, that frees us from shame, brings us close to a gracious Redeemer, and makes us able to confess our sins.

By providing an honest, safe counseling environment, counselor C helps Ron to explore his past and present thoughts and feelings. Rather than viewing Ron as the product of his own selfish sin, counselor C sees Ron as immersed in the same flood of depravity as all other humans. Ron has been violated by others and has chosen his own evil, yet there is hope for Ron if he can see his need and reach beyond himself for help.

Counselor C wants Ron to come to a point of feeling forgiven but not just forgiven for specific personal sins. The goal is for Ron to recognize his need for someone beyond himself and to feel loved, accepted, and forgiven in the midst of growing relationship with Christ. The counselor is not merely teaching Ron about forgiveness but is living out the essential quality of humility that gives forgiveness meaning and encourages honest self-exploration.

Encouraging Honest Self-Exploration

What If This Happened?

During one session, Ron sighs, puts his head between his palms, and announces, “I feel so worthless. Yeah, my parents abused me, but I’ve done some bad things, too. I didn’t abuse my kids, but I abandoned them. Is that any better?” Each of the counselors described here would respond differently.

Counselor A: “Ron, haven’t you been hard enough on yourself? Is it really yourself you are angry with, or is it someone else?”

Counselor B: “You’re asking an important question, Ron. God is stirring inside of you and asking you to answer. How do you suppose God would have you answer the question you are asking?”

Counselor C: “You’re feeling surrounded by pain, Ron. Pain for what others have done to you, pain for what you have done to others, pain about how difficult life can be.”

Whereas counselor A uses Ron’s statement as a chance to externalize responsibility, and counselor B uses it to identify sin, counselor C uses it to establish empathy and encourage deeper exploration and sincere confession of need. Both counselor A and counselor B close the door on further self-exploration by asking for a specific response from Ron. In contrast, counselor C keeps the door open by communicating understanding and empathy without calling for a specific response. Counselor C might come from any of several theoretical persuasions that value insight—cognitive, psychodynamic, humanistic, family systems, or another—and is committed to attitudes of humility and empathy that free Ron to explore and understand his thoughts and feelings.

Will This Help Establish a Healthy Sense of Need?

Counselor A

Counselor A communicates: “You are not a sinner but a victim of someone else’s sin. You are okay.” After counseling, Ron may feel better, but he may also struggle with the nagging doubts of unconfessed failure. A danger of externalizing blame is that clients sometimes stop considering their personal responsibilities and inadequacies. The impulses to confess feelings of loneliness, isolation, and guilt that bring clients to counseling are easily smothered by counselors who insist their clients are victims of the past. Clients learn to construct a facade of shame resistance but lack opportunities to explore the real sources of their shame because their counselors refuse to take confessions seriously.

Counselor B

At the other extreme, when counselors encourage clients to internalize blame, psychopathology may worsen. Rather than producing a sincere awareness of need, this may produce a profound sense of helplessness and add to feelings of shame. This is illustrated by counselor B. Ron may learn to express remorse and exercise a surface-level form of confession, but he has not yet explored the depths and consequences of his childhood disappointment and anger. Confessing is not just listing our sins; it is letting another see who we really are. Ron is not prepared for true confession after seeing counselor B because he himself does not yet fully understand who he is.

Counselor C

Counselor C helps Ron understand both internal and external attributions for his current situation. He has been hurt by people and situations beyond his control, and he has hurt others. Like every other human, he has sinned and has been sinned against. In a counseling context such as this, clients are freed to understand themselves accurately, to present themselves to a caring counselor without fear of reprimand or ridicule, and in the process, to recognize their need for others.

Will This Help Establish a Healing Relationship?

Though the counseling relationship is not spiritually redemptive in itself, it models our redemptive relationship with Christ. In the context of Christ’s love and grace, we are freed to understand our human limits and needs and to reach upward for help. It is not our awareness of sin that comes first; it is only by God’s prevenient grace (grace that comes before salvation) that we are able to see our sin and experience salvation (see Eph. 2:8-9). Grace comes first, then recognition of sin. We are freed to understand our weaknesses after, not before, we experience grace. This is the kind of relationship counselor C attempts to provide Ron.

Imagine the spiritual consequences if God related to us in a way similar to the way counselor A or counselor B did. If God were like counselor A, we would be saved because we are good people. Perhaps God would line us up, from best to worst, and then choose a dividing point. Those on one side are evil, abusive people, and those on the other side are powerless victims. Those who are abusers should confess, and those who are victims should feel angry at the abusers. Victims will be loved, and abusers will be punished. Does this sound right? Of course not. God does not rate our morality on a bell curve and then accept everyone who is above the median. God recognizes and grieves over our sin but extends grace regardless of our merit. “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:22-26).

If God were like counselor B, our relationship with God would depend on our capacity to recognize and confess specific acts of personal sin. Christian faith would mutate to legalism, and we would all live in fear.

Thankfully, God loves us first, then draws us into a relationship where we are able to see the pervasive effects of personal and original sin. In the safety of God’s loving arms, we are able to see ourselves honestly, confess our needs and sins to God, and savor the healing of redemptive grace.

None of us can replicate this perfectly in our counseling relationships or other relationships, but like counselor C, we can set this as our goal for a healing relationship. The interpersonal connection of counseling, or of caring community, is what makes confession bearable.267

Facing the Challenges

Challenge 1: Moving from Two Areas of Competence to Three

Most of us trained in psychology have learned a particular set of values regarding remorse and confession. We have learned to listen carefully to our clients’ guilt feelings and self-condemning thoughts, then to help them reinterpret their story to relieve feelings of shame and often to externalize responsibility for their bad experiences and feelings. This is useful with many clients.

What If This Happened?

Since childhood, Susan has blamed herself for all the bad in her life. Her mother, saddled with the excessive responsibility of four children and two jobs, often screamed at Susan, told her that she was worthless and that she should never have been born. Susan internalized those words and now berates herself frequently, reminding herself that she is worthless and would be better off dead.

A competent counselor, Christian or otherwise, will help Susan be kinder to herself. A cognitive therapist will help her change her self-talk to be less condemning and more affirming. A behaviorist might help her find success experiences and encourage Susan to reward her successes with positive self-statements. A psychodynamic therapist will help Susan unlock the shame of the past in order to understand the difference between her mother’s words and her own view of herself. A humanistic therapist will provide a nurturing, safe, accepting relationship where Susan can learn to be nicer to herself. All these approaches have merit, and any will probably help Susan feel better and see herself more accurately.

Unfortunately, the popularization of psychology has resulted in good ideas being overapplied and misused. Counselors need to free clients like Susan from their shame, and sometimes we need to free people from excessive burdens of guilt. But too often we have also tried to free people from appropriate guilt and from acknowledging their need for God and others. The result is a popular psychology that promotes independence and self-sufficiency while it undermines the spiritual life. Though many competent psychotherapists, Christian and non-Christian, do not accept the prevailing dogma of guiltless individualism, popular psychology books have saturated society. As a result, many people have come to associate psychology with irresponsible freedom and self-centeredness.

If Susan reads a popular psychology book instead of seeing a competent therapist, she may rid herself of shame by taking on the identity of a self-sufficient, angry victim of past abusers. Susan needs to be freed of her shame, but not from all feelings of guilt because accurate guilt leads to greater self-understanding and ushers us into a healing process of confession, remorse, forgiveness, and redemption.

Competence in the spiritual life calls us to be critics of many contemporary popular psychology perspectives and invites us back to the ancient process of acknowledging human need, confessing, and finding forgiveness in the context of caring community. Saint Augustine knew that healing was found not in self-centeredness but in confession and seeking God’s favor: “Accept the sacrifice of my confessions from the ministry of my tongue, which Thou has formed and stirred up to confess unto Thy name. Heal Thou all my bones, and let them say, O Lord, who is like unto Thee?”268 Spiritually sensitive counseling requires us to accept, even encourage, our clients’ desires to cry out for help in the midst of their need. Crying out, confessing need, is a vital part of the healing process.

Challenge 2: Blurred Personal-Professional Distinctions

In the case of Ron, counselor B and counselor C were each committed to helping Ron come to a point of healthy confession, but only counselor C was effective. What was the difference? Humility. Humility is a product of personal training, not professional expertise. Christian counselors who personally practice the discipline of confession train themselves in humility and become more effective in the counseling office.

Christian counselors may exercise the personal discipline of confession in at least two ways. First, private confession to God helps us recognize our continual need for spiritual sustenance. This involves confession of sin, and it also involves ongoing confession of faith. We ought to remind ourselves every day, every opportunity we have, that we need wisdom and strength and mercy because our human abilities are limited and tainted by sin. In this continual confession, we remind ourselves that we are weak and that we long for God. We would prefer to be strong, but we are not. The apostle Paul asked God three times to remove a nagging problem, but the problem persisted. Paul’s subsequent confession of need has been quoted many times through the intervening centuries: “So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9-10).

Second, we can confess our needs and struggles to one another. Although personal needs can be discussed in the context of friendships, fellowship groups, and trusting marriages, professional difficulties often cannot be disclosed in these circles because of confidentiality concerns. Thus, many counselors seek help in the form of peer consultation, clinical supervision, or personal therapy.269

As counselors, our personal practice of confession affects our professional work. As humbling as it is to seek out personal therapy or to discuss counseling failures with a clinical supervisor, these risky acts of disclosure help us understand the role of confession in emotional and spiritual healing and make us more effective counselors.

Challenge 3: Expanded Definitions of Training

How do counselors train themselves for confession in counseling? The answer to this question depends on how one anticipates using confession in counseling.

Confession as a Specific Counseling Technique

Some counselors may wish to use confession as a deliberate technique in counseling. For example, when working with couples, it may be helpful to take time during one or more counseling sessions for both spouses to confess their regrets and shortcomings to each other. Also, participants in many twelve-step recovery programs learn to confess misdeeds to those they have hurt in the past.

Most Christian counselors do not frequently use confession as a specific counseling technique. In a recent survey among members of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS), respondents reported using instruction in repentance or confession with approximately one-third of their clients.270 And when Christian counseling training program directors were surveyed, confession was found to have little or no emphasis in most curricula.271

Though Christian counselors use specific instruction in confession with only one-third of their clients, this need not be cause for alarm. Many clients come with problems that are unrelated or only marginally related to guilt feelings. To insist on repentance or confession might derail effective counseling in these instances. Also, many Christian counselors may value confession in counseling but do not attempt to reduce confession to specific counseling techniques.

Confession as a Posture for Life

Some views of confession, including the one presented in this chapter, do not lend themselves to specific counseling techniques. Instead, confession may be viewed as an effective posture for life and not just as expressions of remorse offered in the counseling office. From this perspective, counseling helps people learn to live humbly, admitting their weaknesses to another and drawing support from a safe counseling relationship and from knowing God. Counseling, because of its confessional nature, gives opportunity for clients to learn humility, what Andrew Murray calls the “root of every virtue.” At best, confession becomes a way of life, a habit of holiness.

But this presents a problem: Counselors cannot simply walk into the office announcing that their clients need to be more humble and need to confess their sins. The very act of making such an announcement models arrogance and suppresses honest self-exploration. So how can counselors train themselves to promote honesty and humility in the counseling office? By becoming humble themselves.

Christian counselors, like clients, are healthiest when they view confession and humility as essential components of spiritual and emotional maturity. While some counselors practice autonomously, seemingly certain of their choices and techniques, others practice with humility, seeking advice from colleagues, praying for guidance, and even admitting uncertainty. This type of confessional posture is difficult to teach in the classroom, but it can nonetheless be included as part of counselor training.

In the Wheaton Doctor of Psychology program, students meet in small groups each week to discuss their clinical work with a faculty preceptor.272 Clinical faculty members also meet together to discuss their private clinical work. In each of these groups we ask questions and confront our feelings of uncertainty. Should I refer this client to another counselor? Am I being sensitive to the cultural context of my client? What might happen if I pray aloud with this client? How do I deal with my feelings of anger or attraction toward this client? What should I do when I don’t know what to say in the middle of a counseling session? Are there scriptural principles that should be applied in this situation? What happens when clients don’t get better? Faculty do not have all the answers to these questions, but we are able to encourage students to keep refining the questions, find answers when available, and maintain a posture of authenticity and confession. After training is completed, counselors are wise to continue asking these questions. Finding a group of peers who are willing to adopt a confessional posture regarding their work is a useful way to find support and build a community of counselors who help one another. Whenever we are tempted to be complacent and satisfied with our knowledge or maturity, we should remember the wise words of Thomas à Kempis: “If it seemeth to thee that thou knowest many things, and understandest them well, know also that there are many more things which thou knowest not. Be not high-minded, but rather confess thine ignorance.”273

Challenge 4: Confronting Dominant Views of Mental Health

In one sense, confession is quite compatible with contemporary views of mental health. The essence of counseling is confession. Clients cast off masks and disclose to counselors secrets they have locked away for years. With confession comes emotional release: feelings of guilt and remorse, and tears. After confession, clients often feel relieved and clean.274 Unlike the topics discussed in previous chapters (Scripture, prayer, and confronting sin), confession is seen by most counselors, regardless of their religious persuasions, as a valuable part of counseling.

Are there differences between the prevailing use of confession in counseling and a Christian understanding of confession? I suspect there are more similarities than differences, but one potentially important difference is the one shown in figure 5. Whereas most forms of counseling are confessional in nature, the outcome of confession is different in Christian counseling. Redemption in traditional counseling is found in the counseling relationship itself. In Christian counseling, we try to live out a redemptive relationship while serving a greater Redeemer. One points toward “I am okay”; the other points toward “I am forgiven.”

What If This Happened?

Roger confesses a secret to his counselor. When he was sixteen, he screamed at his mother, “You’re always complaining about how sick you are, but you don’t care about anyone else! I wish I could just have a normal mother.” She died of congestive heart failure three days later.

Roger’s counselor listens carefully, allows Roger to express his pain and grief, and empathizes with how difficult his mother’s death must have been. Roger feels a sense of relief from the shame and sadness that have haunted him for many years. During the following sessions, Roger feels better and rapidly moves toward termination. Roger started counseling believing that he was an ungrateful, evil, worthless person. He ends counseling believing that though he regrets some things about his past, he is okay and worthwhile. Roger has seen a competent counselor and feels better as a result.

Competent Christian counseling might look very similar to the counseling Roger received in this example. A Christian counselor would also listen empathically and intently to Roger’s confession, allow him to express feelings of shame and remorse, and avoid judgmental or harsh statements. But in the sessions that follow the confession, the counseling may move in a slightly different direction. The first counselor moves Roger toward “I am okay,” while the Christian counselor moves Roger toward “I am forgiven.” These two examples illustrate the difference.

Example 1

Roger: I feel glad that I told you about my mom a few weeks ago, and I have experienced a lot of relief during the past weeks. I really feel a lot better. But sometimes I start thinking about it again, and I just feel overwhelmed with shame (tears form in his eyes).

Counselor: What do you suppose the next step is? What will it take for you to feel okay about yourself?

From here, the session is focused on healthy forms of self-talk to help relieve the shame Roger feels. For example, “That was a long time ago. I’m sorry about what I said, but there is no use wallowing in guilt. Mom would want me to get on with my life.”

Example 2

Christian Counselor: What do you suppose the next step is? What will it take for you to feel forgiven?

From here, the session is focused on Roger’s spiritual life and how he views God as harsh and punitive, just as he perceived his father. He and his counselor arrange some homework assign- ments using visualization, Scripture memory, and self-talk that help him see God more accurately.

In one case, the counseling relationship is an end in itself, and in the other case, the counseling relationship points Roger toward a closer connection with God. Not all clients are interested in considering their spiritual lives in counseling; but for those who are, Christian counselors can help them experience forgiveness as well as relief from shame.

Challenge 5: Establishing a Scientific Base

Unlike some other topics considered in this book, confession and the role of appropriate guilt in mental health appear to be of growing scientific interest. The studies that have been published to date, many of which were reviewed earlier in this chapter, suggest that confession promotes health and that some forms of guilt are helpful. Furthermore, people who are deeply committed to their religious values appear more likely than others to experience healthy forms of guilt and confession. Mounting scientific evidence suggests that Christian counselors should value confession as part of the counseling process.

Challenge 6: Defining Relevant Ethical Standards

An important ethical principle for health-care professionals, dating back to the Hippocratic oath, is to “treat people with respect for their dignity as human beings.”275 Christian counselors, and all health professionals, strive to treat people with kindness and courtesy.

Most Christian counselors are good about introducing a friendly, human touch into their counseling work. In a recent national survey of 500 Christian counselors, a colleague and I found that 94 percent use self-disclosure, at least rarely, in their counseling work; 98 percent call clients by first names; and 95 percent have clients address them by first name, at least on occasion. Though some ardent psychodynamic therapists believe any touch is threatening to a client, 99 percent of Christian counselors disagree and are willing to shake clients’ hands.276 This appears to be good news: Christian counselors are committed to treating people with friendliness and kindness.

Though the news is good, viewing confession as a vital part of therapy introduces at least two risks that Christian counselors ought to consider. First, if confession is viewed only as admitting personal sin, it is difficult for a counselor to maintain humility and, thus, a respect for the client’s dignity. Counselors who believe their job is to help clients identify and repent of specific acts of disobedience are placing themselves in a position of arbitrary authority where arrogance is difficult to escape. Arrogance and respect for a client’s dignity do not go well together. It seems better to view confession as a lifestyle that is practiced by a counselor and learned by clients because of the collaborative nature of counseling. Confession from this perspective is more often a confession of general need than a confession of specific sin. Counselor and client together acknowledge the limits, weaknesses, and needs associated with being human, and look for strength in Christian faith and community.

Second, some counselors may attempt to model humility and confession through excessive self-disclosure. By advocating an attitude of humility and a general posture of confession, I do not mean to imply that counselors should relate personal incidents of weakness and failure to clients. As discussed briefly in chapter 5, too much self-disclosure on the part of the counselor can muddle and interfere with the counseling process. This role reversal of the counselor-client relationship is inevitably harmful and is one of the predictors of sexualized counseling relationships.277

Self-talk, not self-disclosure, is the means by which a counselor can become humble and develop a posture of confession. Throughout a counseling session, we talk to ourselves, telling ourselves how we are doing and how the client is doing. An attitude of confession requires us to remind ourselves of our own weaknesses and vulnerabilities. As clients describe their feelings of fear, anger, shame, guilt, or loneliness, we remind ourselves that life is a struggle and that we all are vulnerable to pain. As clients confess mistakes, we remind ourselves that God has dealt graciously with us for past mistakes and that we can be ministers of that grace to our clients. This inward attitude of confession and humility helps create a counseling environment of respect for the client’s dignity.

Summary

Blaise Pascal wrote in the seventeenth century: “If man was not made for God, why is he only happy in God? If man was made for God, why is he so opposed to God?”278 This observation is an apt summary of the contemporary practice of confession in counseling. On one hand, there seems to be an internal longing for God, what Pascal described as a “God-shaped vacuum.” This longing is seen in our human desire to confess our misdeeds and our need for forgiveness. To be sure, this longing has become completely secularized for some people, even to the point that it is not recognized as God-directed. Though the changes of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and postmodernism have taken the practice of confession away from the organized church and turned it over to psychotherapists, it is the inner, God-given urge for confession and forgiveness that makes both penance and therapy effective.

On the other hand, we have opposed God in our practice of confession. Some people have secularized the urge for confession by resisting God’s call to humility and caring community. Psychotherapists do important work, but without religious substance they cannot replace the spiritual necessity of confessing our need for God. Others, often Christians, have opposed God more subtly, exhibiting personal pride and arrogance while calling clients to humility and confession.

Spiritually sensitive confession in Christian counseling calls us to a place of humility and compassion. All of us, clients and counselors together, are needy people crying to a gracious God for mercy. Confession gives voice to our cries and hope for forgiveness.

Upon Reflection

This chapter strikes me as one of the most important in the book, in part because it speaks to who we are, those we sit with in the counseling office, and the roles we take when interacting with one another. It reminds me to listen—really listen—to my clients and to allow them the dignity of exploring their struggles without my minimizing or dismissing them.

One of my failures as a counselor pertains to this topic of confession. A man came for help with depression, and I helped him feel better, as counselors do. A few years later I learned that my former client had sexually abused his daughter throughout her childhood. Even now, years later, this story burns in the pit of my stomach and causes me to wonder how often I have failed clients who came to me hoping to tell their stories and left with a few psychological tricks for “better mental health.”

In his New Testament epistle, James writes, “Not many of you should become teachers in the church, for we who teach will be judged more strictly. Indeed, we all make many mistakes. For if we could control our tongues, we would be perfect and could also control ourselves in every other way” (James 3:1-2, NLT). If James were writing today, I wonder whether he might also add a warning about becoming Christian counselors. We guide people toward self-understanding and truth, or perhaps away from it. May God grant each of us wisdom and grace as we pursue this calling.

In this update, I begin by describing the importance of confession as seen through a recent doctoral dissertation. Then I discuss counseling as moral philosophy and counseling as integration, and conclude by considering a cyclical relational view of confession in counseling.

A Recent Study of Confession

Some of the topics I covered in this book, such as forgiveness, have been studied extensively since 1996. Confession has not. Only a handful of studies have been reported, perhaps because counselors and psychologists are somewhat hesitant to connect what they do in the counseling office with the religious tradition of confession. For those who want to know more about the scientific study of confession, sparse as it is, I recommend an article by Aaron Murray-Swank and colleagues, listed as additional reading at the end of this update.

I recently supervised a dissertation by Angela McCormick—now Dr. McCormick—on the topic of confession of sin.279 Angie’s findings were intriguing and reminded me how important it can be to let people speak of their struggles and failings. Most of the people in her study remembered wrongs that happened years ago, some more than twenty-five years in the past, which suggests that memories of guilt and regret are significant and enduring. Confessing their remorse, to God or to another person, brought people a sense of relief and thankfulness and seemed to permanently alter their self-perceptions. They talked about having an enhanced understanding of themselves and their weaknesses and about being able to accept forgiveness and love from God and others. The memories of wrongs they had committed or of wrongs others had done to them were released with the confession; they no longer felt bound and defined by the sins of their past.

Counseling as Moral Philosophy

As I emphasized in the 1996 version of this chapter, counseling is a moral activity. Some would suggest that we do values-free work, simply sitting nonjudgmentally with people as they seek to understand themselves and their world better. This is why Freud had his patients lie on a couch and then sat out of their view—so that he could create a pristine, values-free environment to allow his patients to do their own personal exploration. Freud had some things right, but this we must question.

Both Angie’s dissertation and my remorse over my former client remind me that this work we do is far from values neutral. Knowingly or unknowingly, counselors guide their clients toward a way of living, and if this thought doesn’t terrify us, it at least deserves our careful attention. Every time we speak or remain silent in the counseling office, we communicate something about how life is or how it ought to be. What do I communicate with my words, my silence, my financial policies, my facial expressions and gestures about the way life ought to be lived? How thoroughly Christian is my understanding of the good life, and to what extent do I communicate these values to my clients? Like it or not, when we sit with our clients, we are practitioners of moral philosophy.

The core of moral philosophy involves understanding virtue in the context of our worldview. As a Christian, I return again and again to a time-honored, three-dimensional worldview: creation, fall, and redemption. I alluded to creation in the chapter 2 update and to the Fall in the chapter 3 update. You’ll find some of my thoughts about redemption in the chapter 8 update. Through all these runs the vital Christian virtue of confession. Confession involves seeing ourselves as beloved creatures, made in the very image of God (imago Dei). It also involves recognizing our frailty as fallen humans prone to wound and be wounded. Finally, it involves acknowledging God’s persistent desire to bring us life—abundant life—in the midst of our struggles and victories, our angst and our hope.

When confession occurred with a priest in a confessional booth, it may have focused primarily on one’s sins and misdeeds—at least that’s what I seem to have learned from Hollywood depictions. That sometimes happens in counseling, too, but we need a bigger understanding of confession. Confession is not talking merely about transgressions but also about the larger issues of creation, fall, and redemption. For some clients, the greatest moment of triumph in counseling comes when they are able to set aside their shame and confess that they are deeply loved by God. For others that moment comes when they are able to confess how deeply wounded they have been by another person, who has violated them in some terrible way. Sometimes it involves confessing that God is still good, even when life seems dismal and uncertain. In this bigger sense, confession is agreeing to see oneself and others in light of this larger Christian worldview. Confession involves admitting who we are and who we are not, and humbly accepting both.

In the chapter 5 update I described how I am learning to see sin more as a relational wound than merely as forensic violation. Seen in this light, confession entails acknowledging—maybe even proclaiming—our condition as broken, fallen, needy people, because we are finally safe enough to do so. When we see ourselves as recipients of the sustaining, abiding, redeeming love of Christ, we can afford to be honest about every dimension of ourselves. We no longer have to shrink in shame or pretend we are perfectly good, because we are profoundly loved instead.

Jesus told a parable in which a religious leader and a tax collector are both in a house of worship. The religious leader recounts all his good deeds while the tax collector confesses his shortcomings and begs God for mercy.280 Jesus calls us to be the tax collectors in the parable, asking God for mercy, not so much because we fear God’s anger but because we yearn for the shalom of restored relationship. This becomes the context for Christian counseling. It is a place to yearn for Eden, to seek wholeness in relation to our just and gracious God, to speak (confess) one’s life story, and to discover the unexplored aspects of creation, fall, and redemption.

What I regret so deeply about the man I saw years ago who never could speak of his terrible sin is that I failed to communicate the breadth and depth of God’s love as I sat with this man. We cannot confess sin when we do not see the bigger narrative, the redemptive moral framework in which we live, but once we begin to see the purposes of God, we can speak the truth about our failings and struggles and learn to rest more on God’s character than on our own.

Counseling as Integration

One of the great joys of being an educator is seeing the “lights come on” in the lives of students. Students typically begin our doctoral program wondering how to make counseling more integrative. This is a good goal, and I hope they find their training helpful in this regard. But the bigger goal for me is to help students see that counseling is integrative. It’s not just a matter of saying a strategic prayer or holding certain moral standards as a counselor; it is also about the deep themes of human understanding and interaction that emerge in a counseling office just as surely as they emerge in a prayer meeting or a worship service. Sometimes I wonder if this happens even more in a counseling office because in our faith communities we have sometimes dealt with sin in a shaming way and caused people to hide more than discover who they are in Christ.

I recently received an e-mail from a student who is nearing the end of his doctoral training, in which he wrote, in part,

What I have been mulling over for some time in my mind is by no means an attempt to envelop confession in psychotherapy, or vice versa. Instead, it is a way to open the dialogue between two disciplines that for too long have grown apart.

. . . Dare I say that psychotherapy can be a redemptive and sacred process?

. . . When formal confession was discarded and psychological treatments demonized, Christians were left with few opportunities to safely and confidentially explore the intra-psychic. To some degree, this may be why life coaching, spiritual guidance and behavioral, solution-focused therapies have become so prolific. Confession is not done in isolation, but in the presence of another, with another. The relationship is reparative.

In his e-mail, I see lights coming on. Here is a man who once asked all the typical questions about how to do integration in psychotherapy, and now he is seeing that something about psychotherapy itself is integrative. Confession is not simply a Christian component to mix in with standard counseling theory. Counseling is by its very nature integrative, in part because of its confessional tone. Perhaps my student is right about why all sorts of counseling have grown so rapidly in recent years—because people yearn for a place to be known, to be able to tell the parts of their stories that they have never spoken before.

A Cyclical Relational View of Confession

Throughout these chapter updates I have emphasized a relational perspective more than I did in 1996. This reflects my growing understanding of counseling and Christian theology, and it influences every topic addressed in this book.

Confession is not simply cognitive or forensic; it is not just admitting what we have done. Confession involves understanding ourselves in relation to one another and to God. Throughout the Old Testament we see God call a wayward people back into relationship, always asking the Israelites to recognize their rebellion and repent. We see a relational cycle, with Israel rebelling and repenting, over and over.

So also in effective counseling, confession involves coming to a place of understanding the relational roles we play, often over and over. When I think of my former client and his inability to confess his sin in our sessions together, I wish partly that he could have just come clean and admitted his sin, but I wish even more that he could have seen the cyclical nature of his relating to others. It is true not only that he abused his daughter but also that his actions almost certainly reflect a way of relating that will tarnish other relationships as well. Sexual abuse is a misappropriation of power, a way of using another to please oneself. Unless he has come to understand this way of relating, he has gone on to harm others by misusing power, even if he has not done so in sexual ways.

Cyclical relational patterns are not limited to child abusers. One person acquiesces to another without even asserting a contrary opinion and yet inwardly resents the other. Another person hides in shame without letting others get close. Someone else draws close in friendship but then runs away as soon as the first trouble emerges. All of us have ways of relating to one another, for good and for ill. Counseling often involves helping people understand their cycles of relating, giving them opportunity to confess these patterns in the context of a safe, confiding, therapeutic relationship.

Final Thoughts

At age fifty-two, my joints still allow me to play basketball once or twice a week. Having played for almost thirty years now, I recognize that basketball is first a game of vision. The best players are not always those with the best skills but those who have an ability to see others on the court.

In a similar way, counseling is about vision, about seeing where each of us is in the context of a larger metanarrative. Christian counselors are moral philosophers, helping people see themselves in the context of creation, fall, and redemption. Effective counseling is not so much a matter of getting people to admit their sin as it is to see themselves as beloved sinners in an enduring relationship with God and others. This may be the essence of confession—feeling safe enough to tell the truth.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Robyn Honeycutt for helping me with this chapter update. Robyn has been a part of counseling ministries in her church for a number of years and is now approaching the end of her doctoral training in clinical psychology.

Additional Reading

Aaron B. Murray-Swank, Kelly M. McConnell, and Kenneth I. Pargament, “Understanding Spiritual Confession: A Review and Theoretical Synthesis,” Mental Health, Religion, & Culture 10 (2007): 275–291.

Bibliography

McCormick, Angela G., and Mark R. McMinn (August 2009). Is confession perceived as good for the soul? Poster presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association. Toronto, Ontario.