Identity Crisis

I am loving seminary thus far. I am in my fourth semester now, and when it winds down, I will only have one year left. Where did the time go? I have speculated (and prayed, of course!) a great deal about my future plans... perhaps more schooling, perhaps a ministry position (or both!)... we'll see where Father leads! Exciting times, to be sure.

For one of the counseling classes I'm currently taking, I have to respond to a series of weekly online questions posed by the professor (and also respond to at least one other student). Here is one of those questions:

It is your first counseling session with a man who describes himself as a confused and struggling Christian. Your counselee says the following when asked about his presenting problem: “I am frustrated with my powerlessness in the Christian life, I see other Christians seeming to flourish while I struggle much of the time with doubts and temptations. I wonder, is everyone else just faking it or am I the only one that has a daily struggle with my Christian life?” Based on what you have gleaned in this course thus far—assess your counselee. HINT: I’m not asking you how you would counsel this man; I am asking you to assess him based on what he said in response to the presenting problem.

I can SO identify with the 'counselee' in this scenario... and I'm sure many of you can too. This is how I responded... and I would be curious to hear how some of you might respond to this question.

The first sentence provides a clue to part of the counselee’s problem – he says that “I am frustrated with my powerlessness in the Christian life”. (emphasis mine) This tells me that he has the mistaken belief that the Christian life is to be lived out of our own resources – that we have to somehow muster up the power to do everything that God requires of us. His understanding of the reality of the exchanged life – Christ living His life in and through the believer – is either inadequate or nonexistent.

Another issue here is that the counselee seems to be gauging his spiritual progress by comparing his performance in the Christian life to that of other believers. They seem to have it all together on the outside, so he automatically assumes that something is wrong with him if he experiences any struggle. His reasoning seems to be that if he is unable to ‘pull it off’ at least as well as those around him, then obviously God is disappointed with him. He does not have an adequate understanding of his identity in Christ – that he is a totally loved, totally accepted child of God. It is obvious that he has been running on the treadmill of performance-based acceptance and is finally at the point where he is tired of it and is ready to jump off! Philippians 3:9 has not become a reality for him in his experience – rather than appropriating the righteousness that comes by faith in Christ, he is unwittingly looking to the Law (his performance) to gauge his righteousness.

There could be several causes for his behavior. Perhaps he is hanging on to some faulty teaching from previous church experience. It could be that his parents were very demanding of him and he could never live up to their expectations, no matter how hard he tried. In this instance, it would be quite natural for him to project those views onto God. Perhaps there are other instances of perceived failure that would come to light with some deeper probing. Whatever the cause, it is clear that the main issue here is that he is looking to the progress of others to evaluate his progress in the Christian life, rather than looking to Christ Jesus, “who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” (1 Cor. 1:30 NASB)