(RNS) — In my grownup life, I’ve extra years in remedy now than I’ve within the faith world, although by any estimate I’ve nonetheless simply been to twice as many church companies as psychotherapy classes.
And whereas I solely rely myself a Christian in probably the most liberal sense of the phrase, and I more and more work out my lifetime’s price of neurotic spirals by way of the framework of psychology, I can’t shake the spiritual classes of my theological upbringing: sin, forgiveness, redemption and hope.
Which is why I often discover myself in church on Ash Wednesday, even when I don’t go on Easter or Christmas. I’ve come to the view that spiritual religion and scientific psychology can and do work collectively to result in human flourishing, however I by no means really feel farther from my therapist than the second when a member of the clergy locations ashes on my head.
Whereas Christmas and Easter characteristic miracles I battle to imagine, Ash Wednesday begins with a easy reality I can see with my very own eyes and ends not with a creed however with a truth: You might be mud and to mud you shall return.
This shouldn’t trouble anybody within the psychological well being subject. Whereas faith and psychology are sometimes portrayed as being at odds, most psychologists have little to say concerning the everlasting future of our souls and extra to say about our households of origin and what vulnerabilities we would go alongside to our kids. Christianity and psychology each take the connection between thoughts and physique significantly, however come at it from vastly totally different views. Christians are likelier to know themselves as embodied souls, whereas psychology may grant that we’re ensouled our bodies.
The place the psychological well being business might need hassle with Ash Wednesday is its strong doctrine of sin and its name to “battle towards non secular evils.” Even professionals and their sufferers (like me) who’re favorably disposed towards faith — and Christians who’re open to mainstream psychological well being remedy — concede that it’s tough to reconcile the insights of Christianity and scientific psychology with regards to the character of transgression.
We expertise fallout when we don’t, in clinicians’ parlance, stay in accordance with our price programs. However the therapeutic focus is extra on the sinner’s personal struggling than on ethical righteousness. Disgrace is mostly considered unhelpful. Psychological well being will depend on liberating the thoughts of delusions and asserting the need whereas disavowing repression and extreme guilt. Clinicians converse of empathy and built-in selves, not repentance from sin.
This isn’t to say that nobody in these professions is spiritual or that they can not work with spiritual sufferers — some are and most do. And a affected person will be struggling or bettering with out regard to his or her spiritual beliefs and practices.
However Ash Wednesday is when this collision of values, ideas and options presents itself to me most poignantly. By reminding me what I’m — mortal mud — it places me again among the many pilgrim souls on Earth, elementally sane, pondering and wandering towards redemption. In dealing with dying, every of us — layperson, affected person, therapist or pastor — has to stake out what we finally imagine, what has gone improper with us (individually and collectively) and what or Whom can set it aright.
A psychologist may suppose that fasting on a winter workday with ashes on the brow betrays ignorance, or perhaps a little bit of madness. However the Christian idea of penitence and the treatment of Good Friday and Easter connects me again to the world, the actual world, in ways in which make purely psychological options really feel much less stable. On this small act of devotion, I give myself over to the ministrations of a church that, for all her faults and for all my doubts, I earnestly imagine will nonetheless be standing on the finish of time.
Even when perception is tough, which it virtually all the time is for me, on this sooner or later I stand with the penitent devoted and ponder whether the priest’s Ash Wednesday admonition is price greater than all of the therapeutic insights I’ve gleaned: Repent and imagine within the gospel.
(Jacob Lupfer is a author in Jacksonville, Florida. The views expressed on this commentary don’t essentially mirror these of Faith Information Service.)