On Human Models

Therapy is about growth. A lot of people enter therapy and feel better about themselves in just several months of growth than they did in decades of stagnant survival. Often, they pick a hero or guru and try to grow according to that person's values and standards. This could be well and good. There is value, of course, in modeling ourselves after others who have progressed farther than us.

 But if they are not careful, they can be so consumed of their own growth and modeling that it becomes a god in itself. All human models are limited. They will ultimately disappoint us. Genuine, total recovery cannot be based on a foundation of medical psychiatry or humanistic psychotherapy. Physical or nutritional support is important but its not enough. Having beneficial work to do and social recovery are also important - but they, too, are not enough. Only therapy and growth that's rooted in spiritual reality will last.

A wise man once wrote that there is a God-shaped hole in every human heart. Nothing else can fill it. Sex or romance cannot. Money, fame, power cannot. Human model or willpower only digs the pit deeper. There is absolutely no power within ourselves that is up to the task. For genuine, total therapy and wholeness to happen, we need a Higher Power, a power outside ourselves, to take up residence in our hearts.

Where do you find this Higher Power? Ultimately, you find God only in His revealed Word, the greatest psychotherapy and recovery book - the Bible. I believe we will not escape our unresolved injuries from the past, our obsessions and compulsions, until we place our personal faith in the greatest therapist who ever lived, Jesus Christ, of the Bible.