Discipling the Therapeutic/Psychologized Person
“This makes Christianity look highly implausible at the current time. If the message about the self is that of expressive individualism or psychological man, and if that message is being preached from every commercial, every website, every newscast, and every billboard to which people are exposed on a daily basis, the task of the church in cultivating a different understanding of the self is humanly speaking, likely to provoke despair.” [1]
The major conflict in making disciples in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s World Come of Age is that once society became adult, it developed its own mind and went its own way. It has gone so much off the rails in its idealism, and its progressive thought has progressed beyond its knowledge, beyond its ways and means, and lost control of society. Bonhoeffer wasn’t recommending leaving behind the Gospel and its foundational truths that shaped western civilization, he was simply recommending that Christianity shed its ancient garment and take on a more modern look, what he called a “religionless Christianity.” But the kind of person Dietrich Bonhoeffer was no longer exists.
Bonhoeffer was a product of German aristocracy, brilliant, high strung, pampered, privileged, fastidious, judgmental; essentially an intellectual snob. He was fluent in several languages and learned new ones easily. He was familiar with and meaningfully conversant with history’s great poets, scientists, historians, theologians, and philosophers and was a connoisseur of opera, the theater, and was himself an accomplished pianist. He traveled first class and was accustomed to servants. His father provided a personal chauffeur, and Dietrich drove a new Mercedes convertible provided by his family.
He looked down on American theology and theologians. By the time he was at Union Theological Seminary in 1930 on a post-doctoral study grant, he had already earned two PhDs at the University of Berlin that dwarfed anything American liberal theology had to offer. The students and faculty amused him with their quaint and weak theology and the way they chose their beliefs was like a man would choose an automobile. In our present era you will not find a student or a disciple like Bonhoeffer, or any of his ilk. People are simply not that well educated any more. Society has transformed its disciples. Someone suggested that the contemporary person has experienced transubstantiation by credit card; consumerism is our monarch. This transformation has taken centuries to develop. It has required the advancement of technology, the rise of science, the power of economics, hundreds of years, and the cooperation of the church. Philip Rieff, the late Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Triumph of the Therapeutic traced this change in the type of people developed through the ages.
The development through time begins with the idiotic person. Idiotic meaning focused primarily on self and survival. A product of primitive culture, a pagan world whose moral code was based in myth or unknown forces like the sun, the moon, or trees, and whose faith was in fate.
The next era was marked by the political person, who advanced to a society rooted in cooperation and community, from such things as the Greek polis, the idea of democracy, and the early formation of philosophy through Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. But the larger moral codes of society rooted in formal religion had yet taken root in the West.
The third era gave rise to the religious person, God was revealed as personal, transcendent, with law and morality rooted in a biblical narrative. This brought stability to society, and an impulse to rely on a greater power. This was the era that built the great nations and powers in Western Civilization. I would suggest primarily because at its foundation, it was in sync with reality and the way the earth and humans were created.
Next came the economic person, who gave rise to the belief that the way out of poverty and the development of the middle class must be in capitalism. Adam Smith and his work, The Wealth of Nations, was published in 1776 giving rise to how all societies could be improved through work and productivity. This was countered by Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto in 1848 which presented a utopian idealism that could only work with governmental tyranny. Its primary weakness was to misunderstand human beings. All people need to be governed, not by the government but self-governing based on development of godly character.
The next era that began in the 1960s was the psychological person. This person is a product of what Rieff called the Triumph of the Therapeutic, a person who is driven mostly by consumption, personal reflection, and where desire rather than self-discipline becomes the dominant force in a person’s inner life. The psychological person is morally confused, they lack an objective moral foundation, they are anti-historical and cut off from history. They are lost at sea and are easily tossed around by what they are told in superficial packaged “news” reports. They are sucked into the vortex of self-creation. This person is self-transformed, or what earlier we called transubstantiation, by credit card. The customer is king and we consume products that create the image of what we want to be. The present age is one where our images are created by camera angles and good lighting. You can be changed by the swipe of a credit card.
It is into this illusionary world that we have been sent. In fact, we are part of it and have been successfully discipled by it. We have become the very thing we are against and are working to correct. What can be done? Into this morass, Jesus plops down his word and his requirements that have not changed since he spoke them because humans have not changed since then. We are still foundationally the same.
“Jesus warned his disciples not to tell anyone who he was. ‘The Son of Man must suffer many terrible things,’ he said. ‘He will be rejected by the elders, the leading priests and the teachers of religious law. He will be killed, but on the third day, he will be raised from the dead.’”
- Luke 9:21,22 NLT
I find it so interesting that Jesus speaks of himself in the third person as though it is someone else. At this stage he knowingly understands that he is within a year of experiencing what he describes, but he is able to distance himself from it in order to instruct his followers. But this, like some information, is only for his most trusted insiders. There must have been a slight break in the action as now he begins to address a larger crowd. And here is the explosive truth. What he is about to say is clearly not just for leaders or insiders. In fact, it is the Gospel for all people.
“THEN HE SAID TO THE CROWD, If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but are yourself lost or destroyed?”
- Luke 9:23-25 NLT (emphasis added)
Some observations
Faith equals following; if not following, your faith fails.
Turning from selfish ways requires reflection and repentance.
Turning from selfish ways is a decision followed by a process.
Taking up your cross is required, is personal to each life, and can’t be done alone, you will need a like-minded community.
A cross means death to your former life, your dreams, your agendas, your plans.
You will fail if you try to “hang on” to bits and pieces of the old life.
If you give up your life, you will actually save it. Being “saved” requires this process – Repentance. Belief. Follow.
If you reject this, don’t follow Jesus, you will not be saved, you will be lost/destroyed.
All who are called to salvation are called to discipleship, no exceptions, no excuses. Do you see any exceptions in Jesus’ declaration?
[1] The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Carl R. Trueman, Crossway Books, Wheaton, IL. 2020. Page 404
