It seems that increasingly the church is accepting and even promoting the idea of therapy. And it also seems the counseling field is quite open to the good which may take place for a person in church. While the two respect one another, I don’t get the sense they have good explanations of what is going on when the person leaves their own room – the church sanctuary or the therapy office. Here I would like to suggest a psychological explanation of the evangelical encounter typically termed “getting saved.” That is, what does clinician think is happening in the church sanctuary. This is not to suggest a psychological account of that encounter has any more merit than a theological explanation, but I find it helpful.
Carl Rodgers
There are many views in the world of psychology on what happens to create change and benefit the client in therapy. I will be using here the person-centered perspective of Carl Rodgers as a frame, It is one I very much like and recently have been reading. For Rodgers, the main point of therapy is to set the client up to experience being “received” that is accepted. Rodgers lists three key conditions which need to be present for positive change.
- The therapist must be genuine (sincere) and congruent (not saying one thing while feeling another).
- The therapist must accept the client and have a warm, positive attitude towards them.
- The therapist must demonstrate empathetic understanding – this means the client’s feelings and personal meanings are perceived by the therapist
When these conditions are present, Rodgers says, change will certainly happen. He writes,
“As he finds someone else listening acceptingly to his feelings, he little by little becomes able to listen to himself…[and] becomes more acceptant of himself. As he expresses more and more of the hidden and awful aspects of himself he finds the therapist showing a consistent and unconditional positive regard for him and his feelings. Slowly he moves toward taking the same attitude toward himself, accepting himself as he is, and therefore ready to move forward in the process of becoming.
Carl Rodgers (on Becoming a person, 1961)
So the change depends on encountering someone, a therapist in this case, who is willing to engage and accept the person just the way they are. Though Rodgers points out this kind of relationship certainly happens between friends, spouses, and many other places than just in a therapist’s office. The acceptance is a catalyst for the person’s own acceptance of themself. This acceptance allows them to acknowledge and deal with previously buried parts of themself which they were afraid or unable to acknowledge. Opening this communication with the self and accepting the self is what causes healing. There is not a high emphasis on the person’s past – the crucial point is the relationship the counselor and client can establish from which healing can result.
Goals of Therapy
This is the person-centered perspective of Carl Rodgers, but most of the field seems to have a similar end in mind – even if very different ways of arriving there. Freud and the psychoanalysts work to raise the subconscious to the conscious level of awareness. Similarly Jung and those in his tradition work to get the person in touch with the repressed parts of the psyche, often this is through examining dream content – the goal in integration. Much of trauma therapy is about revisiting events which caused the person to become stuck, disintegrated, and out of touch with themself. The internal family systems perspective of Richard Schwartz works to help the person know and accept various parts of themself which they’ve locked away or repressed. Usually, across therapy models, the goal is to help the person care compassionately for themself and the parts of them which are hidden away. Rodgers states this can only happen if the person first experiences a love and acceptance from outside, from someone else.
And this sounds a whole lot like John 4:19 – we love because we were first loved.
Getting Saved
Getting saved in the evangelical sense is often characterized as “asking Jesus into your heart,” a phrase which I have not liked very much. Though recently, I’ve begun to wonder if this is just about the best way of saying it after all – more on that later. For me, there was a very distinct moment in time when I “got saved.” Kneeling beside my parents bed and praying the sinners’ prayer through sobs – it was a very charged and meaningful moment. Then about five years later my faith became awakened in a new way.
This awakening happened while reading a book called The Ragamuffin Gospel which is all about the idea that God loves and accepts us exactly for who we are, not for who we should be – portrayed nicely in this movie scene. I began to not only believe but also experience the reality that God loved me, and liked me, for the first time. The night I prayed the sinners’ prayer, I was terrified of hell. When I read The Ragamuffin Gospel, I was moved by the reality that I was ok, and loved, and accepted without changing at all – that I was first loved. That realization indeed sparked change in me.
With these observations as a preface, I will describe, psychologically, what I think is going on when someone “gets saved.” I will here reiterate this is not a better or more correct explanation that the theological one offered in church. It is a different frame.
The Process
There are some key tenets involved in getting saved in an evangelical sense. First, you must believe in your heart (the most sincere and important place) that Jesus is Lord. I see this as an explicit statement that the person who is being encountered is the single most powerful in existence. Second, you must confess that you are a sinner who needs salvation. And I see this as a statement of inner poverty – the person knows they are not being saved due to their own merit or worthiness. And finally, you must put your faith, the full force of your conscious power, into believing that your prayer for salvation is heard and your request granted.
So what is committed through these things, in my view, are as follows. The person is in peril, a bad state. God is acknowledged as the most able, powerful, and perfect being to exist. And it is none other than this God who delights to enter in and love and accept the person just they way they are. This means that if the most holy being to exist is able to accept the person and live there inside them with everything that makes the person in peril and in need of being made clean, then perhaps the person can begin to view themself in this same accepting manner. If God almighty can accept and love you, it’s not a huge leap to you being able to accept and love you. and this acceptance of the self and willingness to examine (through a confession of sin) what was before repressed, denied, and hidden is the catalyst for positive change. Pyschologically speaking, the therapist and the higher power play similar roles. If they can receive the person in a non-judgmental fashion, then the person can begin to see themself in a new light, and from there they can change and grow.
There are countless stories of incredible change happening in the lives of those who have this spiritual experience of surrendering to Christ. Things like addictions disappearing or a cloud of depression lifting or a sense of purpose and meaning given. And very similar things are reported by clinicians who sit with people who begin to receive love and who experience these things.
Conclusion
Two more points. Asking Jesus into your heart is an expression which has become cliché. Still, what more succinctly sums it up? The person is appealing to the greatest good to come and dwell with their inner peril and accept them as they are in their desperation. That is no small thing. Secondly, I think many Christians would be disturbed at this account and deem a psychological account (such as I have written) to be dismissive of the encounter with God. I disagree. The mind must be part of the conversion process; Jehovah is not taking a literal hammer and chisel and carving flesh and brain matter. So change of perception and sense of self are occurring. This is an attempt to ponder what might be happening from a psychological perspective when a very theologically oriented event takes place. Both theology and psychology are but feeble attempts to understand ourselves and the divine – and so we grasp.
javen.bear. 