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Growing up into Christ: some insights from psychology Joanna Collicutt Heythrop College, University of London The Beautiful Mind? HTB Contours of the Christian life for individuals AND communities • Perfection • Orientation • Re-orientation: turning • Growth The Beautiful Mind? HTB Perfection The Beautiful Mind? HTB Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. • Teleios means ‘complete’ – Also ‘perfect’, ‘whole’, ‘full-grown’, ‘mature’ – So – ‘grow up!’ • Teleios and cognates mentioned about 30 times in the NT – 8+ times as an adjective – 16+ times as a verb – Occasionally as a noun – Features prominently in Hebrews, where it refers to Christ and his work The Beautiful Mind? HTB The Christian life is telic Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal (teteleiōmai); but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal (skopon) for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3.12-14 The Beautiful Mind? HTB Psychological approaches to goaldirected behaviour 1. Dan McAdams: Three level model of personality 2. Robert Emmons: The psychology of ultimate concerns 3. Charles Carver & Michael Scheier: Control process account of affect The Beautiful Mind? HTB McAdams: Levels of personality description • Level I – decontextualised traits, basic tendencies, temperament ~ ‘having’ • Level II – strategies and plans, personal projects, personal strivings, what the person is consciously trying to do ~ ‘doing’ • Level III – identity or life narrative, integrating Levels I and II into a coherent system ~ ‘making’ The Beautiful Mind? HTB Emmons: Three levels of goal directed action 1. Ultimate concerns 2. Personal striving 3. Action programme (2.& 3. roughly correspond to McAdams’ Level II) The Beautiful Mind? HTB Carver & Scheier: Three levels of goal reference value 1. Idealised self-image 2. Principle 3. Action programme (2.& 3. roughly correspond to McAdams’ Level II, 1. us related to his Level III) • This model is • • Strongly hierarchical Relates emotional experience to rate of approach to as well as distance from desired goal The Beautiful Mind? HTB Summary of models Life narrative Strategies & plans Ultimate concerns Personal striving Action programmes The Beautiful Mind? HTB Idealised self-image Principles Life goals and well-being • Self-concordant goals – At all goal levels there is a clear relationship to sense of identity (self-image) ~ vertical coherence • Congruent goals – Goals are self-determining or intrinsic, not • External ~ imposed • Introjected ~‘negative’ guilt-driven • Identified ~ ‘positive’ duty-driven • Coherent goals – At level of ‘personal strivings’, ‘strategies and plans’, ‘principles’ goals help bring each other about (see Ephesians 4.16) ~ horizontal coherence Sheldon & Kasser (1995) The Beautiful Mind? HTB Orientation The Beautiful Mind? HTB From ultimate concerns to THE ultimate concern • At the heart of the Christian life is its orientation • The fundamental expression of this is prayer – An intentional Godward-directed stance • Listening to God • Responding to God in word and action "Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The Beautiful Mind? HTB Re-orientation: turning The Beautiful Mind? HTB Goal–directed behaviour • Metanoia means ‘repentance’ (NOT ‘conversion’) – Also ‘change of heart’, ‘turning from sin’, ‘change of way’ – So, it is about changing direction – Re-orientation • It is a continual process involving – Returning – Remembering The Beautiful Mind? HTB Re-orientation • A change of perspective • Where this change is radical and sudden it is associated with ‘epiphanic experiences’ – Quantal shift into a new and utterly convincing way of seeing the world, including greater clarity in relation to meaningful goals – Such shifts are understood as a natural part of childhood development, especially the shift from an egocentric world view and the development of ‘theory of mind’ The Beautiful Mind? HTB Piaget’s three mountain experiment The Beautiful Mind? HTB Epiphanic experiences: Seeing things differently • Characteristic of scientific ‘breakthroughs’ – e.g. Kekulé, Darwin • A dominant image in the Bible – Isaiah 6.10 Matthew 13.15 (where it is closely related to turning) – John 9 The Beautiful Mind? HTB The psychological conditions for epiphanic experiences and metanoia • Developmental crises – Luke 2.42ff • Major cognitive incongruity – Parables • Outright trauma – Acts 9.1ff NB Fast rate of change has a different emotional tone from gradual change (cf Carver & Scheier’s control process model) William Miller & Janet C’de Baca (2001) Quantum Change: When epiphanies and sudden insights transform ordinary lives. New York, Guilford Press. The Beautiful Mind? HTB Developmental crises The Beautiful Mind? HTB Returning, remembering, arising, and growing up The Beautiful Mind? HTB Parables • Jeremy Duff & Joanna Collicutt Mcgrath (2006). Meeting Jesus: human responses to a yearning God. London, SPCK. • Meeting Jesus is a recursive process • Parables are – Incongruous – Paradoxical – Ambiguuous The Beautiful Mind? HTB Trauma • Involves the shattering of assumptions about the self and the world (Ronnie Janoff-Bulman (1992/2002) Shattered Assumptions: Towards a new psychology of trauma. New York, Free press) • Is a breakthrough of reality – Offers a glimpse of the eschatological imagination • Is central to the accounts of the journeys to – Emmaus (escape from aftermath of trauma) – Damascus (attempt to avoid inevitable trauma) – Both accounts end with the protagonists • Arising • Changing direction • Posttraumatic GROWTH (Richard Tedeschi & Lawrence Calhoun (1995) Trauma and transformation: Growing in the aftermath of suffering. Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage) The Beautiful Mind? HTB Growth The Beautiful Mind? HTB The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity (teleion), to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love. Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. That is not the way you learned Christ! For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4.11-24 The Beautiful Mind? HTB Personality change following conversion • Psychology – Goals change – Personality traits don’t change • NT – Goal orientation changes – Godward – So principles must likewise change – virtues • connection depicted as ‘spiritual fruit’ – Relatively little is said about action programmes The Beautiful Mind? HTB Living out a Godward orientation I • Following Christ – The idealised self-image is identified with Christ – For the self-concordant person strategies, plans, strivings, and principles relate to Jesus as role model: ..let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12.1b,2 The Beautiful Mind? HTB Living out a Godward orientation II • Receiving Christ – I-Thou – Being known by God – Bearing fruit of the Spirit – For the congruent person these strategies plans, strivings, and principles flow naturally from a relationship with Christ: …I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” The Beautiful Mind? HTB John 15.5 There is a dialectic between • Persevering in the race and bearing fruit • Following Christ and receiving Christ • Prayer is – Work – Rest and play The Beautiful Mind? HTB Bearing ‘fruit worthy of metanoia(s)’ • There is a delay between planting and harvest – avoid premature judgment – allow time for fruit to ripen • There is a process of transformation at work – unpromising folk can yield amazing fruit – don’t be mislead by first impressions • There is a deep connection with the past self and a radical leaving behind of the past self – ‘I will make you fish people’ – respect both processes The Beautiful Mind? HTB Recognising fruit of the Spirit • There is no simple prescribed relationship between principle (virtues) and action patterns – ‘Peace’ • Might be passive or assertive – ‘Love’ • Might be emotional or practical – ‘Joy’ • Might be loud or quiet • Respect personality traits and abilities The Beautiful Mind? HTB Spiritual gifts • Outpouring of God’s grace – For building up the body of Christ, evident in its collective fruits – To orient, and re-orient the body – Point towards Christ – Correspond more to ‘states’ rather than ‘traits’ The Beautiful Mind? HTB The Beautiful Mind? HTB