Depression
Life is often challenging and at times seems particularly overwhelming. Circumstances such as financial strain, job stress, disappointment or loss in close relationships can lead to discouragement. When anxiety and hopelessness begin to paralyze you, driving you inward and compromising your capacity to attend to responsibilities and relationships, it is…
Externalism
“People can think correctly and behave rightly and worship politely and still live badly–live anemically, live individualistically self-enclosed lives, live bored and insipid and trivial lives.” -Eugene Peterson
Rethinking Love
Marriage is a gift from God and as such is inherently good–even when we don’t do it so well. It is good because it originates in the goodness of God. That is important to remember when we find ourselves disappointed and prone to being critical, distant, and withholding. When this…
Counseling and Wisdom
As far as helping methods go it is easier to sell so-called expertise, methods, and quick fixes. We tend to want ready answers, thus cookie-cutter wisdom, but wisdom cannot be packaged. It is not wooden or simplistic. More often than not real change requires significant shifts in perspective and motivation;…
Stillness
“We work hard and play hard not because we are more industrious or more playful than our ancestors but because we dare not stop lest in the stillness we are overwhelmed by the sound of our own anxieties and fears.” -Peter J. Gomes in his introduction to Tillich’s The Courage To…
Complicated People
As inconvenient as the condition suggested by our title may be, it describes all of us. Some attempt to “flatten” humanness by a mechanistic definition of man. Headmaster Thomas Gradgrind in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times was not the first nor the last to do so: “Thomas Gradgrind, Sir. A man of realities. A…
What Makes for Real Communication?
When couples come to my office for the first time and describe what is wrong in their relationship they often identify the problem as one of communication. I recognize this as an attempt to explain the distance, tension, and frustration they experience in their marriage. I can often assume their…
Merry Christmas
“…and laid him in the manger, because there was no place for him in the inn.” Luke 2:7 ESV Christmas Greetings, Few would script the coming of the world’s Savior in this way. It did not appear that the arrival of Christ exactly began with a bang. Isaiah tells us…
Understanding
“We will not achieve an accurate knowledge of ourselves, of what has gone wrong with us, and of what we are meant to be, unless we lift our eyes from ourselves to ponder God’s nature….” -Mark Talbot
Why Theology?
For many, the connection between counseling and theology is not clear. Our tendency is to look to the field of psychology for answers to personal problems and to look to the Bible for answers to spiritual questions. But in fact theology, properly understood, is intensely personal. It should not be…