Here is what we know and where we are going. First, shame is blended into our present human condition. That doesn’t mean that happiness and joy only come at the cost of massive denial. No, there can b...
Worriers are visionaries minus the optimism.
The language of shame is extreme. Hear it enough and you believe it. You are told you are disgusting and unclean, and eventually you believe you are.
The Holy One is not human. The triune God is not human. Don’t limit God’s character by your expectations of what a decent human king might do. You expect God to reject; he accepts. You expect him to t...
I have a new philosophy. I only dread one day at a time. —Charlie Brown
One reason Christians respond positively to a needs psychology is that it takes people's pain seriously. However, this perspective can actually make pain worse. It compounds pain by suggesting that no...
With our touch, Jesus becomes our scapegoat. In his touch, Jesus takes our sin and absorbs our shame (Psalm 69:9; Romans 15:3), and we receive his righteousness. If you prefer symmetry in your relatio...
You never expected that God himself would, by his representatives, actually come close to unclean people and touch them. The Holy One is not human. The triune God is not human. Don’t limit God’s chara...
Need theories can thrive only in a context where the emphasis is on the individual rather than the community and where consumption is a way of life.
But the point is that we live in a culture that idolizes happiness, and if we idolize happiness, it will always elude us.
Then, when shame strikes, it is so nasty you have to numb yourself, and what better anesthetic than your addiction? It is the perfect vicious circle.
Only people who know they have burdens can be delivered from them.
You would think that anyone would jump at the chance to escape shame. But that isn’t the way it happens. Though shamed people are happy to guide others out of their dark prisons, they are always sure...
We loathe worthlessness, and for good reason. We have a primal sense that we exist for something better and, indeed, we do. We are created in the King’s image and created to be with him. But there is...
Now listen more carefully to depression. Like all feelings, it is a kind of language. Guilt says, I am wrong. Anger says, You are wrong. Fear says, I am in danger. Depression, too, has a message, but...
Knew something about prayer, asked Jesus how to pray (Luke 11:1). Here is where prayer really
Speaker calls the Christian counselor to look at each person as soul embodied with unique challenges that move us. This is not, he says, the first step before we get on to important business but vital...
When you have to manage the world, please everyone, earn more than you did last year, and work off five pounds, you will be driven. If not, you run the risk of being un-American or even un-Christian b...
If our failure to consistently worship the true God is the key feature of sin, we are sinners all.
He says I love you first, even when we respond with an indifferent shrug or the equivalent of a passing, Oh, thanks. And in this we discover why it might be hard for us to move toward others: the one...
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