Seeing through new eyes - 13 August 2009 |
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David Powlison understands a good deal about what makes Christians tick. More to the point, he understands how to help us tick better. He understands how to help us grow in maturity and Christlikeness, whether through particular trials, specific crises of ungodliness, or just the normal ups and downs of the Christian life.
Powlison’s book Seeing with New Eyes is unsettlingly insightful. It’s basically about bringing the Bible to bear on our all-too-human messed-up-ness.
He’s brutally honest in the way he refuses to ignore the issue of human sin, even when addressing the trials of the Christian life. This sets apart genuinely Christian counselling from every secular alternative. Here he is quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. (Powlison, Seeing, p. 12)
Painful. But ultimately liberating. Once we face our hidden ungodliness head-on, we’ll be able to start thinking clearly about living as disciples of Jesus in what is, after all, a fallen world.
It’s not that there’s some simplistic connection between sin, on the one hand, and trials, unhappiness, or whatever on the other (You’re having a hard time, so you must have done something really bad). Nope (Luke 13:2-5; John 9:2-3).
Rather, the point is that Jesus Christ is always trying to re-shape us more in his image. Our heavenly Father loves us so much, and loves us so wisely, that he values our sanctification infinitely more than our comfort. He ‘disciplines the one he loves’ (Hebrews 12:6), and occasionally discipline hurts a bit. But if we’re alert to what God is doing, then we’ll be best placed to take advantage of even the most painful situations to grow more like Jesus, which wouldn’t be a bad thing (James 1:3-4).
Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Books, Minister's Blog, Seeing with New Eyes