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we are considering the theme of spiritual stability and we are looking at the text of Philippians chapter 4 where the Apostle Paul gives us the principles that create or generate a spiritually stable life.
You know, this entire society in which we live struggles with the matter of stability. It ought to be obvious to all of us that we live in a very unstable world. And we are in the midst of very unstable people. Our world is filled with anxiety. It is filled with an inability of folks to cope with circumstances in life. There are a myriad of solutions but not many that work any that work apparently as the society continues to escalate in its instability.
Sad to say our particular culture and maybe even sadder to say the church itself continues to direct people in the wrong direction to find the solutions to their anxieties and their instabilities. We have bought into the psychological lies that indicate that man can solve his problems through certain psychological principles, certain introspective self-adjustments. And those have proven not only to be unsuccessful but to be diversionary so that people pursuing the wrong thing and the wrong area come up with the wrong answer and not only that but they then therefore miss the right answer. The legacy of philosophy and psychology to this particular day and age has been to sell a whole generation snake oil...which doesn't do anything that it promises to do.
This was pointed out rather forcefully to me by an interview that I read with Dr. Robert Coles, C-o-l-e-s. Dr. Robert Coles is a social psychiatrist. He is perhaps as esteemed as any man in our country in terms of his area of psychiatry. He is an M.D., he is a research psychiatrist for Harvard University. He is professor of psychiatry and medical humanities at Harvard Medical School. He has written 36 books. He has authored 600 journal articles of one kind or another. And in 1973 he received the Pulitzer Prize. He is a very decorated esteemed and respected psychiatrist.
This interview points up the futility of his own area. While understanding superficially some things about Christianity, he will not call himself a Christian, does not believe he is a Christian and makes that clear in another part of the article. But his answers are very interesting. They asked him why he was not a surgeon. His answer, "I'm sloppy, not a great quality for a surgeon." He said, "When you get a combination of a befuddled slob who doesn't have the necessary toughness and is a little mixed up himself, you've got a psychiatrist." A befuddled mixed up slob with no toughness is a psychiatrist. The question is a mixed up psychiatrist? Coles, "Of course." Question: Is it futile then to search for ultimate answers in psychiatry or psychology? Coles, "The futility is in searching for ultimate answers in the entire secular culture. Psychology happens to be a temporary secular religion. How long will it last? Fifty years. Secular religions come and go. Today it's psychology, tomorrow it will be weight reduction or cholesterol or getting to the moon or Mars. Who knows what our culture will be preoccupied with next? But none of this is going to give us answers to the moral, spiritual questions that we ultimately hunger for. Psychology isn't equipped to answer those questions. Psychology gives us some information about the mind but the mind is not the soul." Question: Psychology then can help a person's mental health? Coles, "We shouldn't even use words like mental health. The question is not what is mental health, or do you have mental health. The question is what do you do with your life?"
Question: But even ministers today are becoming psychologists. Coles, "That is paganism." Question: Pastoral counseling is the term for it. Coles, "It's paganism. My mother was dying here in Massachusetts General Hospital. A minister came to see her. He wanted to negotiate her through the stages of dying. She wanted him to pray for her. She knew she was dying. He wanted to talk about anger and denial but she wasn't angry and she wasn't denying, she just wanted him to pray for her." Question: Is this all part of the same syndrome, we all want to worship the expert? Coles, "The secular expert. Who are these secular experts anyway? What do psychologists and psychiatrists know about the Christian life? What can they tell us?"
Quite an interesting response, isn't it? You get the feeling he's been dropping his bucket in a dry well and he's come to that conclusion. Where do you go to find stability in life? Where do you go to learn to cope? Where do you go to learn to deal with anxiety? Where do you go to deal with circumstances that you find debilitating you and pressuring you? Where do you go to get your life really stabilized? You hear people all the time say, "Well, I've just got to get my own life together." We are literally living in a sea of people who are emotionally unstable
