True Spirituality

by Francis A. Schaeffer

  It is the same in the area of feeling, the emotions. There is no better illustration of this than the example of Freud and his fiancee. Freud, not really believing in love—saying that the end of all things is sex, but yet needing real love—writes to his fi­ancee, "When you come to me, little Princess, love me irratio­nally." I have often said that no sadder word could be written, coming from such a man as Freud. Freud himself at this partic­ular place comes to what I would call a shuddering standstill. He is damned by what he is, by the emotions of real love in himself, because he has been made in the image of God. So again we come to the fact that there are these separations in man from himself, as he has revolted against God.

  Thus, in rebellion, not staying within the circle of what man is but trying to move into the circle of the existence of God, man falls crushed within himself at every turn. At that point he has two possibilities, and just two, if he is going to stay in the circle of rationality. He can return to his place before the personal Creator, a personal creature before a per­sonal Creator. Or else he can go lower than his place. This sec­ond choice is not made on any necessary intellectual grounds based on facts, but because of his rebellion man chooses to go lower rather than return to his proper place as a creature before the absolute Creator. So he chooses to go lower, for he must either go back or he must go down. Man in revolution against the God who is there has no pointing finger, like the Renaissance paintings of John the Baptist, pointing upwards. So sinful man takes his place among the lower circles of exis­tence; he moves down from being man into the lower existence of the animals and the machines. Man is thus divided against and from himself in every part of his nature. Think of it in any way you will—he is divided from himself in his rebellion: in rationality, in morality, in his thinking, in his acting, in his feeling. By rebellion he is divided from God by true moral guilt, and he is damned by what he is, by wanting to be God and not being God because he is finite. He is also damned because he cannot hide among the animals and the machines, where he would try to hide. He still bears the marks of the image of God. He is damned on both sides, in both directions, simply by what God has made him. Every part of his nature speaks and calls out, "I am man." No matter how dark the night of his soul in his rebellion, there are voices that speak from every part of his nature, "I am man; I am man."

  It is no wonder, then, that by the fall man is not only divided from God, and not only divided from other men (as Cain kills Abel, for example), but is divided from nature and from himself. At death the body and soul will be separated for a time, but God has also put a witness in the present life, in that the individual man in many ways is divided from his body even now. As I read the curse that God placed upon man in Genesis 3, it is quite obvious that a large section of the curse falls upon man's division from himself now. The emphasis here is largely physical, but it certainly carries more with it.

  "Unto the woman he said: I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children"; (she is divided from her own body) "and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake." (This is a curse external to himself, in nature.) "In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, until thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." At death there is a division from the body, but this separation does not wait till death. There is a division in man from nature and a division from himself here and now. It is not only that man is divided from his body; he is divided from himself in the thought-world of which we spoke. Man in the present life is divided in his personality. Since the fall there is no truly healthy person in his body, and there is no completely bal­anced person psychologically. The result of the fall spoils us as a unit and in all our parts.

  Now into this situation comes the modern non-Christian psychologist, trying to bring an integration into the thought-world. But the non-Christian psychologist, by the very nature of what he believes, will try to bring about an integration on the level of the original rebellion. Or at the most he will try to root it in an upper-story leap, without a base. He cannot go beyond that. As a result, the integration will be an attempt to relate what is broken in the person to the animals and the machines or it will ask for a romantic leap. Now this does not mean that there are no details which we can learn from these psychologists; there is much to learn from their insights, because they are brilliant men and good observers, but the whole does not meet the need, for it treats man as that which he is not. It is rather like having a very fine motor mechanic, and because we see certain similarities between the physical structure of man and a machine, turning over all our physical healing to him. There could be insights that the doctor might get from the motor mechanic! But the total would not be enough. The basic questions and problems remain to swing for-ward and upward again. Thus a man must hide from these things deep in himself, and as he does so these things make new divisions and new scars. At some level of consciousness man cannot forget that he is man; he cannot totally deny his true rationality or his true morality.

  Surely at this point there should be a cry within us. Surely there must be a real answer in this life to the separation from myself, or is there nothing which is real? And the answer is, "Yes, thank God, there is." I think the key, in a way, is asking the question. How is it that the psychologists who act as if God is there, but merely pragmatically, like Carl Gustaf Jung, are able to help their patients to some degree? I think that it is because that which really helps is always in the direction of the reality of what is. At least a man like Jung has the word "God." Or behind that, there may be at least a sense of some universal purpose, accepted blindly and irrationally, as Viktor Frankl does. And this is in the proper direction, especially in the case of those who at least use the word "God," and so it helps. To these men these things are a piece of theater; but without their knowing it, it is in the direction of what is. In fact he is there, a personal God, who is holy in a moral sense. Not bowing, they do not acknowledge him, and yet pragmatically they find they must act as if he is there.

  Now just as in the area of the problem of being, the bowing of man in the cocoon of his consciousness opens a bridge all the way before him, so when we see what is involved here, we see we must also truly bow at this point of the divided self, and a bridge of understanding and practice opens before us.

  At this point we must make an important distinction. There is indeed purely psychological guilt, in the poor things that we as men in our rebellion have become. I feel that often evangeli­cal Christians are very harsh here. They tend to act as though there were no such thing as psychological guilt. But there is, just as there are broken bones. Psychological guilt is actual andcruel. But Christians know that there is also real guilt, moral guilt before a holy God. It is not a matter only of psychological guilt, that is the distinction.

  When a man is broken in these areas, he is confused, because he has the feelings of real guilt within himself, and yet he is told by modern thinkers that these are only guilt "feel­ings." But he can never resolve these feelings, because while there are merely guilt feelings, he also has true moral aware­ness and the feeling of true guilt. You can tell him a million times that there is no true guilt, but he still knows there is true guilt. You will never find a person who does not still find these movings somewhere in his conscience.

  Earlier we have discussed the question of salvation from our consciences. We have seen there is a strong parallel be­tween justification and salvation from the conscience. I come now as a Christian; I call the specific sin sin; I claim the finished work of Christ; I can say, "Thank you" to God, and my conscience can be at rest. Let us notice that in t
his process the real guilt is not overlooked, it is not swept under the rug. Real guilt is placed in a completely rational framework, and it is met within the framework, with intellect and feelings of mo­rality meeting each other, without any fracture between them. With all rationality in place, and consciously in place (on the basis of the existence of God and the finished, substitutionary work of Jesus Christ) my real guilt now is not overlooked, but is accepted as my responsibility because of my own deliber­ately doing what I know to be wrong. Then it is reasonably, truly, and objectively dealt with in Christ's infinite substitu­tionary work. Now I can say to my conscience, be still! Thus real guilt is gone and I know that anything which is left is my psychological guilt. This can be faced, not in confusion, but to be seen as part of the misery of fallen man.

  To say that there is no real guilt is futile, for man as he is knows that there is real moral guilt. But when I know the real guilt is really met by Christ, so that I do not need to fear to look at the basic questions deep inside myself, then I can see that the feeling of guilt that is left is psychological guilt and only that. This does not mean to say that psychological guilt is still not cruel. But I can now be open with it —I see it for what it is—without that awful confusion of real moral guilt and psy­chological guilt. This also does not mean that we will be per­fect in this life psychologically any more than we are physically. But thank God, now I can move; I am no longer running on ice, that is the difference. It does not need to be the old, endless circle. It is not any longer the dog chasing his tail. The light is let in. Things are orientated, and I can move as a whole man, with all the rationality I possess utterly in place. I will not expect to be perfect. I will wait for the second coming of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the body, to be perfect morally, physically, and psychologically; but there now can be a substantial overcoming of this psychological division in the present life on the basis of Christ's finished work. It will not be perfect, but it can be real and substantial.

  Let us be clear about this. All men since the fall have had some psychological problems. It is utter nonsense, a roman­ticism that has nothing to do with biblical Christianity, to say that a Christian never has a psychological problem. All men have psychological problems. They differ in degree and they differ in kind, but since the fall all men have more or less a problem psychologically. And dealing with this, too, is a part of the present aspect of the gospel and of the finished work of Christ on Calvary's cross.

  A very practical thing for ourselves and for those whom we would help is that it is not always possible to sort out true guilt from psychological guilt. At this point the iceberg concept is a valid concept. This always was important, but today it is more important because men are thinking in this direction. We are constantly brought face to face with the concept of the subcon­scious, which is a realization that man is more than that which is on the surface. All too often the evangelical Christian acts as though there is nothing to man except that which is above the surface of the water.

  Since the fall man is divided from himself, and so since the fall there is that which I am which is below the surface. We can think of it as the iceberg, one-tenth above, nine-tenths below, in psychological terms, the unconscious or the subconscious. Iam not to be surprised that there is something which I am which is deeper than that which is on the surface. Here I am, the iceberg. As we said previously, it is not possible to say at this given moment, "I know that I am perfect—free from all known sin." Who can know perfectly what he knows about himself, as man now is? This is true even at our best moments, and it is doubly true when psychological problems and storms break over us as they surely will break over all people, including Christians. When someone comes to you in a psy­chological storm, and he is really torn up, it is not only unrea­sonable but it is cruel to ask him, in every case, to sort out what is true guilt and what is psychological guilt.

  We all have our problems, we all have our storms, but some of us can have exceedingly deep storms. In the midst of these storms that break over us, it is beautiful to know that we our-selves do not need, in every case, to sort out true guilt from psychological guilt. We are not living before a mechanical uni­verse, and we are not living just before ourselves; we are living before the infinite-personal God. God does know the line be­tween my true guilt and my guilt feelings. My part is to func­tion in that which is above the surface, and to ask God to help me to be honest. My part is to cry to God for the part of the iceberg that is above the surface and confess whatever I know is true guilt there, bringing it under the infinite, finished work of Jesus Christ. It is my opinion, and the experience of many of God's children, that when one is as honest as one can be in dealing with what is above the surface, God applies this to the whole; and gradually the Holy Spirit helps one to see deeper into himself.

  We may know, as the value of Christ's death is infinite, so all the true guilt in us is covered, and the guilty feelings that remain are not true guilt, but a part of these awful miseries of fallen man: out of the historic fall, out of the life of the race, and out of my own personal past. The comprehension, moment by moment, of these things is a vital step in freedom from the results of the bonds of sin, and in the substantial healing of the separation of man from himself.

  Substantial Healing

  of the Total Person 11

  In the last chapter we referred to a substantial healing. I want to point out that when we use the word "substantial," we must recognize two things. The first thing is that there is the possibility of substantial healing, but the second is that "sub­stantial" does not mean "perfect."

  The Bible makes the possibility of miracles very clear, and our experience confirms this teaching. We have seen miracles in which God reached down into history and completely healed, either physically or psychologically, at a certain point of time. But we must point out that both Scripture and experience show that while sometimes God does this, sometimes he does not. This is not always a matter of faith, or of the lack of faith. God is personal, and he has his own purposes. Just because a person is not healed physically, we must not assume that this neces­sarily implies a lack of faith.

  Let us notice that even when God does heal a person per­fectly in one illness, that person may not be in perfect health. Here is a person with a hernia, let us say, who is completely healed of the hernia in answer to prayer. God has done this miracle in answer to prayer, in response to faith, and according to his own purposes. But this does not mean that this person is now at all points physically perfect. He may have a headache that very night! Thus, even such a miracle falls properly under the term "substantial." It is exactly the same with psychological healing. A person may be healed psychologically but that does not mean he will be psychologically perfect the rest of his life. I often think of Lazarus after he was raised from the dead. He surely had physical sickness after this; he may have had psychological depression; and we must remember that eventually he died again. The results of the fall continue until the second coming of Christ.

  If we refuse to move, physically, morally, or psychologically, short of perfection, we will not have what we can have.

  At this point there is danger that even the Christian may want to be God; that is, he may consciously or unconsciously set a standard of superiority, based on the unusual value he puts on himself. Sometimes we do this to ourselves, and sometimes our families do this to us. A family may place undue pressure upon a child of the family, by expressing abnormally high expecta­tions of behavior or achievement just because the child is a child of their family. Often when one hears the cry, "I am not equal to others," in reality the cry means, "I want to be better than others, and I am not." Let us be careful to be honest at this point. It is dangerously easy to have within ourselves, as Christians, the old longing to be God—so that we cry within ourselves, "I should be superior because of who I am." We deny the doctrine of the fall, and we build a new romanticism if we fail to accept the reality of our limitations, including our psychological strug
gles. Thus we lose the "substantially" in beating ourselves to bits, trying to be what we cannot be.

  I am not to set myself at the center of the universe and in­sist that everything bend to the standards that I have set upon my own superiority. I am not to say, "I must be thus," and if it is not thus, there is nothing but psychological despair. Some people are totally caught in this, but all of us have something of it within ourselves, swinging pendulum-like between conceit and despair.

  This is true not only in the psychological area, of course; it is true in all the relationships of life. One does not have to have had much pastoral experience to have met married couples who refuse to have what they can have, because they have set for themselves a false standard of superiority. They have set up a romanticism, either on the romantic side of love or the physical side, and if their marriage does not measure up to their own standards of superiority, they smash everything to the ground. They must have the ideal love affair of the century just because they are who they are! Certainly many of the multiple mar­riage and divorce situations turn upon just this point. One couple refuses to have less than what they have set as a romantic possibility, forgetting that the fall is the fall. Another may want sexual experience beyond what one can have in the midst of the results of the fall. You suddenly see a marriage smashed—everything gone to bits, people walking away from each other, destroying something really possible and beauti­ful—simply because they have set a proud standard and refuse to have the good marriage they can have.