• All my adult life I’ve wrestled with the meaning of growing up in such a heavily psychologized culture. I recognize some value in psychology’s ability to describe patterns that help us understand how and why people behave as they do.
• But I also have a concern that this has lead to our believing more in our own capacity to analyze ourselves, than in God’s capacity. If the Lord speaks to anything in his word, he speaks to the health of the soul in its fallen-then-redeemed state. Hence in last Sunday’s sermon, when David says at the end of Ps 139, “search me and know my heart!” he’s revealing that he trusts God’s judgments more than his own. It seems to me we have to honestly ask if this is true for us as well.
• In recent years I’ve also thought about the fact that God’s creation is necessarily moral. Ours is a world of right and wrong, not just effective and ineffective. Ultimately, all things that are unhealthy for the soul are also bad and wrong morally (see Ps 32, esp. vv3-5). Psychology is very reluctant to assign moral values, concerned as it is with function, not righteousness. I find many (not all) Christian counselors reluctant to describe certain behaviors as wrong, since they’ve bought into a mindset of conditioned-response that effectively exonerates the sinner. No one’s guilty; everyone’s a victim. Christians who speak in the language of psychology, rather than Scripture, sometimes reveal an obsession with solving personal problems over a concern for offending God — which is our only real problem and the only one Jesus came to solve.
• And yet, ironically, the language of psychology is used all the time by laypeople to call one another evil. This is because, again, the Universe is inescapably moral. If I disagree with a friend over the moral content of homosexual sex, I’m not just wrong in his eyes, I’m suffering from “homophobia.” But in this culture everyone knows that’s shorthand for “evil.” That kind of labeling goes on all the time in all sorts of relationships.
• Remember this. When David asked God to search his heart, he had a purpose in mind: “… see if there is any offensive way in me.” That’s all David needed to know, whether or not he was offending God. He already knew that God was merciful and forgiving. David’s peace, what we might call his emotional health, was grounded in his reliance on the character of God. Don’t worry about solving your problems. God will take care of those in his own time. Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.