Graduate Aspirations

This past year I’ve been learning that relationships are the most important aspect of our lives. At Rockbridge, one of the staff workers talked about how God made us to be in perfect relationship with Him and with each other, but the basic result of sin is that all of those relationships are broken. Our default mode is selfishness, right? It’s safer and easier to be alone, and moreover it is incredibly difficult to put aside what we want for someone else. It’s easier to take a pass on restoring the relationships that God intended, because in making an effort, we are fighting against our nature and against who we are at our core. But another thing I’ve learned this semester is this: the fact that something is hard for us doesn’t mean we get a free pass on it. It means we have to work that much harder. So the three convictions that pushed me in the direction of a profession in counseling, and more specifically, Christian counseling, are:

1. Most of our problems are either ones we are responsible for or ones we could do something about. We often don’t realize the power we have to effect positive change in our lives, and as a result we keep ourselves from living the amazing lives we could be experiencing. As the Eagles put it, “So oftentimes it happens that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key.”

2. At the same time, though, our nature is incredibly weak, and there are some things we can’t do on our own. For those things, we have a huge God whose power is always ready to change our hearts and eradicate the selfishness we harbor so that we can be the people He meant us to be; we only have to ask for Him to work his magic.

3. I see the human race as people in need of a Savior. There is no other way for me to make sense of it all. As C.S. Lewis writes, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” If I had to spend my education and/or my career in an atmosphere in which people are considered basically good and in which truths are relative and determined at the convenience of the beholder, I would be miserable. I’m not saying that secular counselors don’t do any good, because they certainly do. But as someone who knows the truth, I couldn’t keep it from people who need it.

Recently I read an article by John Eldredge that frames human life in terms of stories, and characterizes emotional and psychological problems as wrong interpretations of one’s own story. We need Jesus’ story to lend sense and reason to our own life stories. Eldredge writes, “Story is the nature of reality. There is a great story unfolding, and only in the light of that story can any human story be healed.”