Tag: God

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The Goal of Counseling: What Is Our Vision for the People We Talk to?

Why do people go to counseling? It is because they see something in their life or the life of others that is not what it is supposed to be. They are depressed. They can’t find a job. Their financial situation is grim. Their marriage is falling apart. They are bitter. They can’t move forward from loss. Their children are misbehaving. Their work is going badly.

All these reasons presuppose a certain vision of life. This vision exists in the mind of the counselor and the counselee. If the counselee had no goal, then they wouldn’t go to counseling. If the counselor believed people were fine the way they were, then she wouldn’t try to help them.

The question is, what is that vision? How clear is it in our minds?

For many, it is simply the vision of what we might call common or normal life. This is life where you feel OK, make a reasonable amount of money, get along reasonably well with your family, do fine in your job or school, and don’t get into big trouble.

When one of these things are disrupted, people can really start to struggle. This is what leads people to seek counseling. They seek help with these problems so that they can get back to normal life. Often, when that goal is met, counseling comes to an end.

But what if the goal of counseling is not simply the common life? Then, this will have an effect on counseling from the beginning. What if counseling has a bigger vision for life than just getting along reasonably well? Continue reading “The Goal of Counseling: What Is Our Vision for the People We Talk to?”

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How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?

If you or someone you love has questions on this issue (as most of us do!), I would encourage you to read Pastor Tim Keller’s New York Times Bestseller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. I really can’t recommend this book highly enough.

In this post, I’d like to summarize what Keller says about this important question: how could a good God allow suffering?

Whether you are a believer or unbeliever, it’s a question you’ve likely asked at some point in your life, maybe often.

Keller says that there are two ways we can ask this question. The first is intellectual. How can we logically say that a good God could allow evil? The second is emotional. We get angry at a God who would allow such evil.

Let’s consider what Keller says about each in turn.

The Intellectual Issue
In regard to the intellectual question, Keller begins with the objection of a philosopher who states essentially: “because there is much unjustifiable, pointless evil in the world, the traditional good and powerful God could not exist” (23). Continue reading “How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?”

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What Will Make Us Truly Happy?

When you think about it, everything we do aims at one thing: happiness. Many things can make us happy to some degree, but we are always looking for that which will truly satisfy us. We want something that will give a lasting joy and peace that leaves no regret.

In spite of the fact that happiness is the goal, happiness generally eludes us. We pour our energy into a variety of things, hoping they will make us happy, but they always disappoint. In the United States, people in the tens of millions turn to anxiety and depression medication to help them cope with life. I am not judging those who choose to do that (it’s sometimes necessary, in my view). I merely point this out to demonstrate that happiness seems to elude us.

So, what is it that makes us truly happy? In spite of the fact that happiness is what we want, it’s surprising how little time we actually spend thinking about it. Ancient philosophers spent a lot of time thinking about this question. They did not want to pursue happiness haphazardly. They wanted to know what would really make people happy and how.

The Christian theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas summarized this ancient thought in his famous book, Summa Theologica, or Summary of Theology. In the second section of the first part of the work, in the second question (yeah, it’s not exactly what we could a “summary”), he discusses the question, what makes people happy? Aquinas helps us think about this question by first helping us see where we will not find happiness. Here’s what he says.

1. We won’t find happiness in money. Why? Because we seek money in order to be able to get something else. If we seek money to purchase something else, then money cannot be that which would make us happy. To discover what happiness is, we would have to ask, what do we want to do with the money? What do we think that it buys us? Continue reading “What Will Make Us Truly Happy?”

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Fulfilling Our Created Purpose in Everyday Life

God is not just for Sunday mornings, church or Bible reading. Life with God is an all day, every day affair. But how do we learn to see God’s presence in every day life?

We go back to creation. We see that God created culture and work life as the way in which Adam and Eve would live for him in this world. Understanding that, we can see our own work and play as glorifying to God.

In his magnificent poem, Paradise Lost, John Milton imagines how Adam might have seen the life of working, sleeping, and eating in light of His created purpose to live for God every moment. With a little imagination, we can apply this poem to our own eating, sleeping, and working. Here is a section from Book 4 of Paradise Lost. Here Adam describes the work they have to do and all the pleasures they can experience, noting that God’s one prohibition is not hard at all and surrounded by so many good things.

Sole partner and sole part of all these joys,
Dearer thy self then all; needs must the Power
That made us, and for us this ample World
Be infinitely good, and of his good
As liberal and free as infinite, [ 415 ] Continue reading “Fulfilling Our Created Purpose in Everyday Life”

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Why Do We Believe in the Trinity?

Here’s a series of questions and answers on this topic that I wrote many years ago for my congregation. If you have questions about why Christians believe in the Trinity, the doctrine that there is one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, here is a brief explanation in a series of questions and answers.

1. What do we mean by God? God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. He made all things out of nothing by the word of His power. He preserves and governs all His creatures and all their actions.

2. What does the Bible reveal uniquely about who God is? It reveals that there are three persons in the one, infinite essence of God.

3. What do we mean by nature or essence? We mean what something is. For example, the essence or nature of a dog is that it is a dog, of a chair that it is a chair, of man that he is human.

4. What do we mean by person? Each nature has particular instances of its nature. For example, you are one instance of human nature, and I am another. However, by person we mean also that a particular individual of a nature is also intelligent and capable of personal interaction. Continue reading “Why Do We Believe in the Trinity?”

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