A Psychotherapist’s Journey from Futility to Grace

This is a story of suffering, discovery, joy, and victory. It is a journey of personal and professional failure to victory.  Of finding keys that unlock the mysteries of the soul through grace. Many years after I was converted I began to realize how the church had failed to teach me basic elements of original Christianity which I have since come to discover in a new and powerful way. My journey has been difficult. It has been a quest for freedom from darkness, futility, distress, and despair while in search for the authentic Jesus. The Christ of Scriptures is profound. I intuitively knew that if He was honest, life in Him must be magnificent.

My Early life

I became a believer in high school. My life for many years subsequent was not one lived with much success or happiness. While I sought God, my internal projections about Him were quite negative. I saw Him as demanding, perfectionistic, and angry—much like my experience with my earthly father.

Over the years, the Lord broke through my projections to reveal Himself as He truly was.  But as I would fall back into my negative perceptions, it seemed I was always at war with Him. I hated and feared the God I imagined. At the same time, I began to see that my misleading projections did not match scripture. Soon, I began to see beyond those projections.   A glimpse of God as one who loved me and had a plan for my life began to emerge.  But because I had a hard time conceiving that I was a person worthy of His kind of love I struggled to sustain this new loving epiphany. I was, after all, riddled with sexual addictions, rage, emotional pain, tormenting fears, and disabling shame. At times I even prayed for death.  Despite all this, and even in the midst of it, His voice kept beckoning me forward:  Believe in Me.  Follow me.  Still, I was filled with all the doubt and uncertainty commonly found in highly anxious, trust-damaged people.

I grew up in a nominally Christian home. Our family was troubled and conflicted. Arguments were the norm when we were all together, especially between everyone and my father. He was an “old school” son of Middle Eastern immigrants and was an artillery officer in WW2. Our mother was from a British bourgeois family raised in a Victorian home. They met at the University of Illinois Law School in the late 40s and later married.

Unfortunately, my parents were not a good match. They could agree on little except climbing the social ladder. Both were very self-absorbed and willful, and they could never agree on how to raise my brother and me.

Despite my family life, I found Christ during high school as I mentioned earlier.  Still my earlier psychological problems continued to cripple me.  In college I became interested in psychology. I hoped it might unlock the mysteries of anxiety, depression, distress, and dysfunction.  Over the years, I pondered the promises of psychology and the promises of Christ.

I was raised in such a materialist/rationalistic worldview that it was hard for my mind to imagine God as likely to be anything more than wishful thinking. It seemed to me foolish and unsafe to place my life hope in something that, to my mind, seemed too likely to be nothing more than the creation of man.  I was hopeful Christ had the power to rescue me, but I waivered and hedged my bets.

My Training in Psychotherapy

The most common view in the Church is that psychology and Christianity both have answers to man’s troubles.  I think that, to some extent, this is true. We are natural beings and live in a natural world with natural laws that govern it. Classic theoretical schools of psychology claim to be able to change people. Some claim to be able to change them at fundamental levels and heal core injuries. Yet, I have never observed a single case, in any context, where that kind of change occurred. I suggest that psychological health is not synonymous with true Christian liberty. If in some cases, psychology can correct some of the damage to a wounded soul, it still can never fully free a man from the core self-interest which binds us to our pathology.

As a therapist, I excelled as a student. I studied obsessively to discover methodologies that would accomplish transformation in my own life or the lives of my clients. It was, for me, an exercise in futility. I was endlessly left feeling disappointed by the pathetic results when these highly touted theories were applied to real people. Meta-studies are the outcomes of complied research done on a given subjects. I learned that psychotherapy meta-studies also revealed little significant difference in the results of various approaches.  One factor that did correlate with improvement was the relationship quality between therapist and client.

I have always been my own case study—my own therapist and client, if you will. I believe that anything I am offering to others, if applicable to myself, should be provable in my own life. Otherwise, I had no business offering it as a solution for someone else. It so happens that I was also an excellent test for the theories I applied.

I remember a personal revelation while studying maladjustment. I realized my parents had complementary roles in my upbringing.  My father, the villain, failed in many areas but not in everything.  Conversely, my mother failed in the areas my father did not.  In addition, I believe they were both narcissists despite their good intentions leaving me an internal tapestry of maladjusted pathology.  I later realized that I had never met a client with a problem I didn’t have, in some way, in myself.

Therapist and Client

I went through periods where I tried various types of counselors from differing “schools” (or theories) of psychology and psychotherapy. This included several Christian counselors. I was always disappointed. I did much searching of my own as well. My consumption of psychology books, Christian books, and Christian psychology books was voracious. In addition, I was a Christian radio junkie for years, spoke to many pastors, and listened to many sermons.

In all fairness, I was not a careful investigator.  So desperate for answers I tended to believe whatever latest popular fad surfaced. I applied them with vigor.

Unfortunately, I was repeatedly disappointed and grew increasingly unhappy. Psychology, Christian counseling, pastoral counseling, Christian books, and church teachings were all failing me.

I was so unhappy, in fact, I developed a pattern of asking God every night to take my life away. However, I could never bring myself to actually consider suicide. I could not bear the thought of all the people it would harm. I also feared facing eternity with such an end.

His Word

In spite of all this, there yet remained a voice that was definitive in my life. Jesus continued to speak to me, “He who believes in Me, will not be disappointed,” and “Come to Me all you that are weary and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” Such words, so unlike any other’s words.

As I grew to hear His voice more and more, I began to understand things that the Church rarely talked about. His message was offered as a completely free gift, and a life-changing word. All I had was the persistence to press in to receive it and to cling to it in hope “against all hope.”

Christ promised those who abide in Him, would know the truth and that the truth would make you free. I began to understand that Christ died not only to give me access to heaven but that learning to let this message unlock all the keys for me to enter the kingdom of God in my daily life was indeed possible—a living transformation.

Unanticipatedly, I began to transcend the world around me without needing to disengage from it. When Christ liberated my soul, He freed me from self-interests.  It was an outcome I found profoundly greater than traditional altruism.

The New Testament makes claims that are profound and far-reaching. The message is that individuals can be free from their innermost pathology.  These claims are either simply true or not.  I find myself wondering why so few believers are finding this kind of freedom.  The exploration and answer to these kinds of questions is the purpose of this blog.

Why I Write

Not surprisingly, my troubled heart has broken for all the other disappointed, rejected, and marginalized believers for years. More important, however, is the realization of God’s love for each one of them. Never in all my reading of other philosophical or religious writings has there been evident of such a personal God who offers such mercy.

His people are called to protect, defend, and care for the poor and needy. His voice echoes through the history of His call to us to this kind of sacrificial love. It also speaks consistently of His righteous judgment against those who oppress the weak and vulnerable.

This, then, is the reason for my writing; so that the church might be assisted in rediscovering authentic Christianity for what it is. It is the unfolding of God’s profound love for the world and especially those of us who are plagued with complex pathologies. This love was predestined to be manifest even in mortal men through Him. He alone, enables even the most sinful and broken people to rise to such impossible standards. He is the incarnate solution to all of life’s impossibilities including our deepest inner struggles.

Even though I have discovered that I am wholly insufficient to create the slightest bit of the kingdom of God by my human will or effort, the surprise is that God is not. The life that overcomes, abandons all hope in self and lives only through hope in Him. I am calling attention to God’s own words in the Scriptures. It is not my speculation but my merely beginning to comprehend what He is clearly saying. He is presenting me flawless salvation. It follows that such salvation consistently applied cannot fail; the offering is without deficiency and therefore sufficient for all things.

I can attest that despite my troubled life, He makes the weak strong, the cowardly bold, the foolish wise.  Knowing Him overcomes all inner darkness.  I invite you come along as we unfold the unfathomable riches that are found in Christ Jesus.