Thinking Outloud

Rob Bell, evangelical pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, MI, is making quite a stir with his new book, "Love Wins." I hope lots of people read his words. I hope they come to his side of the old Christian debate about the nature of salvation and the atoning sacrifice of Jesus.  While I haven't read his book, I know what it contains. It contains much of what I have been taught, studied, preached, written about and believed about God's intention for the human world through the life, ministry and death of Jesus. In my words, it's less about the details of certain parables and teachings of Jesus about hell and suffering, and more about the nature of God being grace, love and welcome to us sinners. We are all helpless without the love of God. And once we experience that love, Christianity is not so much about right belief anymore. It's about living with freedom, forgiveness, and using our lives to help and heal the world. To care about the kingdom of

Japan's tsunami : the Will of God? My thoughts, from my column for the Savage Pacer : Spiritual Reflections: God suffers along with us during natural disasters

I love Lauren Winner. We have never met, but I think of her as a spiritual friend. Dislocated exegesis | The Christian Century

Male and female brains really are different - but not in ways you may think. Boy brain, girl brain: How the sexes act differently - image 2 - life - 08 March 2011 - New Scientist

I recently had a conversation with a mentor, in which I was the subject. Sharing as I was, I was surprised to find myself feeling increasingly confused and annoyed. I kept talking, and continued to listen to the detailed feedback, but I felt increasingly alone, misunderstood and distressed. Why? Because the first thing I needed, and expected, I think, was some empathy. It wasn't therapy, but it was still very personal conversation. I expected more support and companionable sensitivity. Emotional affinity. That wasn't what I experienced. So I was reminded - in a very personal way - that the very first thing that I must bring to the therapy or supervision conversation, the first thing I offer to the one who sits, vulnerable, across from me in my office, is compassion. Understanding. Empathy first. It's the necessary start of healing.

Pr. Olbert has written an article that may have saved me from years and years of suffering had I read it 20 years ago. Personality disorders, something I know a great deal about now, wreak damage, suffering and sadness in the church by the bucket load. Thanks to him for placing the pain in front of us again, in a helpful way. The Lutheran | Loving the enemy: An increasing number of fragile and vulnerable people are in our pews

The Naked Therapist  Wow. I guess I missed this part of my grad program. Therapy as Foreplay.

The instant availability of pornography on the internet is a serious, life-altering problem for some people, leading to secrecy, shame, and addiction. It can ruin a marriage, and ruin a life. But what of the rest of pornography's casual users? Research is beginning to point to the problem of disconnect for men from real sexual experience with their live partners. Men (who are the heaviest users of pornography of all kinds) can become so accustomed to the rush and impersonal nature of pornography they can lose attention, desire and connection with their own partners. Here's a recent article from TIME Magazine: Does Men's 'Bond' with Porn Ruin Them for Real-Life Sex?

Why We Like Living Here :-)

While most of us who marry intend it to be for a lifetime, about half of all first marriages in the United States end in divorce. Divorce ends not only a couple relationship based at least initially on attraction, trust and commitment; it marks the end of a dreamed future as a family. Despite the pain that most divorces bring, the desire to be happily married doesn’t seem to end, since most of those who divorce will eventually remarry. Marrying at any age or stage of life is a challenge and a good deal of personal work and adjustment, but choosing to marry for the second (or more) time brings with it some additional complications. The most prominent complexity involves entering into an already existing family system as stepparent to the new spouse’s children. As a therapist, I have noticed that a strategy for entering into relationship with the new spouses’ children seems to always take a back seat to the excitement, distractions and stresses of a new love, moving into

One of my professional supervisors recently referred someone to my practice for couples counseling. A day or so later, my colleague got an angry call from this same person, wanting to know why he gave him my name. Did he actually know who I was?! Of course, my colleague said. I gave you her name because she's a very good therapist. I looked her up online. Have you read that newspaper column about the Church? he countered. Well, yes, and I don't think there was anything in that column about the Church and child sex abuse that wasn't true, my mentor said. After some other choice words, the caller asked for a different referral. I think that's what we call client "self selecting."   One of the risks of writing or speaking in public is that people may actually listen to you. Since most if not all of what I write would be considered persuasive speech, what happens as a matter of course is that some people will agree with me, and some people won't. And

Yes, most mentally ill people are not violent. Thanks to the USPRA for such a wonderful professional reflection on the violent attack in Arizona. USPRA Issues Statement on Tucson Shooting      January 13, 2011 The US Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association released the following statement in reaction to Saturday’s Tucson shooting in Arizona: In wake of Tucson’s tragic shooting that shook America over the past weekend, we wish Congresswoman Giffords and the 13 other wounded individuals a speedy recovery, and our thoughts and prayers go out to all of those whose lives were impacted by this act of horrific violence. With such senseless acts, we often search for someone or something to blame. The assassination attempt on Congresswoman Giffords has generated considerable speculation around the mental condition of the suspected shooter, which has heightened the stigma associated with mental illness. We must remember that there is a weak link between mental illness and violence. Accor

Here's how I wrote about the shooting in Arizona for the Savage Pacer this weekend : Spiritual Reflections: How we use our words has impact on our lives

Today I pray, along with so many others for the victims of the Arizona shooting yesterday: six dead, at least 12 others injured, including Congresswoman Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The man in custody for this violence is now being held on multiple counts of murder, and his background searched for clues to his destructiveness. The county sheriff says the young man has mental issues. I say No Kidding. Most of us who suffer from issues of behavior, emotion and thinking have what are called mental disorders. In other words, we as individuals have problems. Problems we know as something a part of ourselves but distinct from ourselves as a people. Those who suffer mental illness are people whose disorders have them. Major mental illness (MMI) like schizophrenia or psychosis so distorts the mind, mood, perception and behavior that we have commonly called these people "out of their mind." They behave as if they don't have two normal thoughts to rub together. Often, they don't.

While all kinds of remedies have no "scientific backing," the Placebo effect, the power of the mind to effect healing with hope and expectation, is certainly a fact of science. No scientific backing to bracelet of stars | StarTribune.com

On this day when so many of us are glad for the blank sheet of paper, the turn of the calendar, the new year's fresh start, I continue to wonder about how people change. That, after all, is what people are really after when they seek therapy. Some relationship, some turn of mind, a problem beyond their experience to avoid or help draws them to consider the time apart, the confidential help that therapy provides. After years of reading, debating, writing and anguishing with others about this human problem, I believe that change requires a combination of pain, hope and resources. Personal pain to want to create difference, hope that will pull us forward even when we continue to fail, and the resources that help us act against habit, behavior, will, environment and even genetics. One of those resources is imagination; another, time; yet another, self control. It's that self control that is such a stinker for us all. And to that point, I was reading an online excerpt today on t

Nice to see that MFTs are coming into the mainstream, although I still think we are a wonderful bunch of iconoclasts, and proud of it! Best Careers 2011: Marriage and Family Therapist - US News and World Report

Yes, if purity of faith is what you're looking for, eventually you will be very - VERY - disappointed. Even the scandalous, unique aspects of faith eventually become part of culture. "All religions are mash-ups," writes Stephen Prothero, religion scholar at Boston University. My Take: Who owns Jesus? Who owns yoga? – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs

What's the difference between friendly advice and therapy? A lot. Compassionate boundaries of respect and limits, for a start. Therapy Issues: Discerning the Professional from the Personal

The good people at www.GoodTherapy.com have made me a Topic Expert in Family Therapy. I write a column monthly - here's the latest: It may be the idealized image of television shows, or perfect, ever-present pictures in advertising in newspapers and magazines, or just the plan hopefulness with which we all start our families. But most of us don’t plan to include chronic, life-long health problems in our family plan. Our bodies are quite amazing creations, able to fight off disease, recover from injury, grow, age and change every day. We aren’t minds that have bodies attached, but we are instead bodies that think. We must eat, move, think, rest, work and love with our physical selves in mind. And for the most part, this natural rhythm of self-care makes life work. But life isn’t smooth, and our physical systems aren’t perfect. Some of us will encounter injury, disease or disability that does not respond to time and care. For many of us, that process comes quite late

     For generations, family members have noted the differences that naturally arise in children raised in the same family. How is it that John, the first born and only boy, seems to have such different personality characteristics than his younger brother, raised in the same house by the same parents just two years apart?  Good question!      Theories of personality abound. You may be familiar with some of the more popular models, often used in work or educational settings. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), based on the four major personality styles described by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, is a favorite. The Enneagram, a model developed in religious communities and often used in spiritual direction, and other forms of personal discovery, is another.  These are models that seek to describe common types of personalities. Other models, such as the Big Five theory, attempt to describe personalities using the idea of common traits shared by human beings across the wo

I've been reading about blogging, and it seems that I'm not doing it right. Those in the know about such things tell us writers, mostly in their blogs, that to blog is to create a personal online community, one which is thirsty for the writer's words and self revelations; writing that steps toward the daily Diary or Journal, and away from more sedate Opinion or Editorial. The most successful of blogs these days - and it seems to change every day - drone on and on about the personal trials of having a newborn, or looking for a job, or recreating the work place, or reinventing the government, or the economy, or the Church. Again. These exemplars are often writing on the fly, with nary a concern for punctuation, spelling, brevity, or privacy. It's all about capturing the reader, and capturing as many as possible. You may have noticed that I'm not much of a rebel when it comes to the niceties of the published essay. I have spent far too many years putting words into