Self Help: How the Theology of the Cross Changes How We Help Ourselves

 

As I was running on the elliptical machine at the gym this morning, I over heard a conversation between two young ladies. One was complaining about her therapist and the other was encouraging her to find a new one. She also went ahead and suggested a few self-help books for her friend to read. Funny thing is, I have had that very conversation with girls from my previous employer. We would talk about self-help books that we liked and the different kinds of therapists they’d experienced. I’ve never been to formal therapy before, but when I was going through a very difficult time this past year, I looked into it. Interestingly, A few books that my friends (non-Christians) recommended to me were all about how to be a bitch. Seriously, they were how-to books on how to take charge of your life, not let guys walk all over you and how to be reserved or hard to get. Guess what books this girl at the gym recommended to her friend? The same exact books. As I heard them converse about their opinions of the concepts discussed in these books, I laughed to myself. One would say, “You have to be selfish, you have to be a bitch.” The other would retort, “Everyone else is, so you have to be.” The self proclaimed counselor of a friend, kept on encouraging the girl to be selfish and be in control of the negative and positive influences of her life. She told her to get rid of all the negative influences because those would only cause negativity to come out of her. Little do they know, it’s not from outside of us, it’s from within that sin and negativity come. We are our own worst enemy.

Lately I’ve been reading Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands by Paul Tripp. It’s part of the series of counseling books offered by the counseling center at Westminster Philadelphia. There have been so many issues going on in my life, my own and other people’s problems, I’ve been wanting to gain a gospel centered approach to counseling my friends and understanding my own issues. A friend of mine really helped me understand what it meant to counsel according to the gospel and I fell in love with it immediately. I had never had the gospel be the center of advice and counsel, counsel had always been law centered before in my evangelical days and even on into my reformed days. It makes sense that this way of counseling fits the reformed understanding of law and gospel and their roles in the believers life. This way of counseling begins with who you are in Christ, includes the whole of redemptive history when using scripture and goes out from there. It’s truly the reformed way of counseling. As a Christian, the book affirms, I have many people around me that I counsel constantly, even if I don’t realise it. I need to know how to correctly encourage my brothers and sisters in Christ. It is my duty to know how to do this as a Christian.

Contrary to the self-help theories of those girls at the gym, this way of counseling begins with the cross and works outward. Selfishness is not how we as Christian’s love our neighbor, sorry Ayn Rand. Instead, remembering who you are in Christ and who your neighbor is–as made in the image of God or as a forgiven sinner just like you whom you can’t hold anything against–changes how you respond to conflict and how you love your neighbor through the conflict. With a correct understanding of who you are, not the center of the universe, we are able to love others as we do ourselves.