The holy spirit in the counseling process

One o t the first works o i the Holy Spirit in the counseling process is that oJ helping the counselor himselj to come to terms with his own unexpressed ~eelings of rebellion and thus be ]ree ~o accept the counselee's rebellion.

The Holy Spirit in the Counseling Process

S O M E T I M E A G O I was invited to give a lecture to an Institute on

Pastoral Care. The subject assigned was, "The Holy Spirit in the Counsel- ing Process." As most of us do when faced with such an assignment, I went to the literature in the field of pastoral counseling. I t was surprising to find almost nothing written on this subject 'per se ' ; I came across only isolated references to the Holy Spirit 's work in this sensitive area of the Church's ministry. And so it was with a good deal of the "search and you shall find" attitude that I set out on my task.

I t was heartening early in the search to come across that very fine little book by the British psychotherapist, Henry Guntrip, Psychotherapy and Religion. The book grew out of a lecture for old students at New College, London.

Professor Guntrip relates that he was privileged to take part as an old student of the college, and also was invited to read a paper on the somewhat vague, if broad, t i t le "Guiding the Perplexed." The general subject under discussion was the 'Holy Spirit , ' and papers were read on the Old Testament and New Testament teaching, the teaching of Congregationalism, and the theological problems concerning the Holy Spirit.

DON FALKENBERG Field Director

Board of Christian Educatlbn United Presbyterian Church

in the U.S.A. San Francisco, California

As Dr. Guntrip points out, his task was to "bring up the rear with an attempt to relate the subject (of the Holy Spiri t ) to the painful realities of con- temporary living. ''1

Well, I thought , if a psychotherapist can speak so freely about the Holy Spirit in the counseling process, maybe it's time that pastors spent some time thinking on this power working through u s - - a power which enables us to accept our humanness, to provide acceptance to the counselee, to cooperate with internal forces working toward wholeness--and do it all within the context of a gathered, reconciling fellowship---the Church. Let us look at the place o r - - a t least--some of the places in which we see God's Spirit at work in the counseling process.

John Dillenberger, Professor of The- ology at San Francisco Theological

1 Guntrip, Psychotherapy and Re'ligion, p. 11.

32 P A S T O R A L P S Y C H O L O G Y November

Seminary, summarizes Biblical evidence concerning the work of the Holy Spirit when he says that the "Holy Spirit is nothing else but a manifestation of the creative confirmation and power of God himself. ''2 A Christian educator, F. Roderick Dull, speaks of the Holy Spirit as the "actualizer" of the work of God--the power which transforms the potential into the actuaP. Karl Barth refers to the Holy Spirit in terms of "God's revealedness. ''4 And a professor in the Department of Philosophy of Religion at Hartford Theological Seminary speaks of the Holy Spirit as present in God's encounter with man and man's encounter with his fellows. " W e must look to relations between God and man and between man and man if we are to find the Holy Spirit," asserts Professor William Bradley. "It is held by Quick, Dillistone, and those upon whom these writers have relied for their authority, that in the Old Testament the word 'Spirit, ' is intended to refer to the activity of God. Similarly in the New Testament we find the Holy Spirit specified in connection with an event which is taking place. That which takes place may be referred to as an encounter between God and man or between men inspired by God, and we seek the Holy Spiri t in this encounter. ''5

C E R T A I N L Y none of us would question the premise that the

counseling relationship provides a sit-

2 Bulletin of the Hartford Seminary Foun- dation, No. 24, June, 1958, p. 16.

3 Dail, F. Roderick, In Evaluation and Christian Education, pp. llff (National Council of Churches publication.)

4 Bulletin of the Hartford Seminary Foun- dation, No. 24, June, 1958, p. 7.

Ibid., p. 6.

uation for encounter of the realest sort ---encounter both vertically and hori- zontally. What is our attitude as we engage in this encounter ?--as "expert" Sitting down with one of "God's un- fortunate creatures"?--or as human being helping another human being come to grips with problems real and bothersome? All of us will agree that in counseling we make little progress if we do not own up to our own human- hess--our own finitude. We hardly need to be reminded that this is not always easy for the pastor-counselor. For the community, by virtue of the esteem in which we are held, often elevates us to a status somewhat above the "human" level. George Christian Anderson Of the Academy of Religion and Mental Health has written, "Clergymen must understand that in our culture they cannot occupy a conceptualized role. The community thinks of clergymen as the custodians of moral and spiritual laws. Despite the growing tendency, especially in Protestant groups, to con- sider the minister as an individual in his own right, he is still regarded as a leader, a teacher, or even an officer of organized religion. ''6

Someone has facetiously observed, " I t is hard for a man to be a Christian and at the same time be a used-car salesman." So also, it is hard for a minister to be a minister and a human being! But much of our effectiveness as counselors depends on our openness to the Spirit of God as that Spirit would call to our minds again and again that we are finite men among finite men. As Wayne Oates puts it: "The counselee and the counselor are much more alike than they are dif- ferent: they both are incurably human, suffer'ing the basic human anxieties of economic survival, the shortness of

6 PASTORAL PSYCI~IOLOGY, Sept. 1956, p. 49.

1964 H O L Y S P I R I T I N COUNSELING PROCESS 33

life, and the continual need for the de- cisive action of the spirit called faith working through love. This realization is their common ground of acceptance and communication. ''7

If we can permit the Holy Spirit to "teach us all things and bring all things to our remembrance," the primary "thing" being our own humanness, there should be results in two ways: first, as counselors, we shall be freed from the need to "play God." Too frequently we are like some parents, de- scribed by Reuel Howe, who are pos- sessed with an almost insatiable desire (shall we call it "neurotic" desire ?) to be "perfect parents." These parents t r y hard to be perfect in their relationships with their children, but in their attempt to be perfect, that is, to achieve a "god- less " " " perfectionism, they arouse in themselves anxiety which in the end produces in their families "tension rather than relaxation, irritability rather than love, ''8 all because these parents think that in order to be "good parents" they must be perfectly loving and perfectly accepting of flaeir children. If they could be, then they would be God..All parents need to accept their own finitude as human beings, and in so doing become free to love their children. .As Howe points out, "I f I could love my child with the kind of love he needs, in the degree to which he needs it, he would be prepared as perfectly as a man could prepare him for real meeting between God and man. To t h a t extent, :at least, my love would have saving effect. I want to love him perfectly because I erroneously think I must meet his every need as if I were

rOates, Anxiety in Christian Experience, pp. 86-87:

8 Howe, Man's Need and God's Action, p. 91.

God, and I cannot love him perfectly because I am not God. ''9

The problem is, as Howe concludes, that parents are tempted to usurp God's place in the child's life by trying to satisfy his need for love. At the same time the parents ' love is limited by their sin, so that when the child most needs love-- tha t is, when he is most un- loveable-- the parents are not prepared to deliver the kind of love the child needs, and so the child "gets an un- lovingness that he does not need."

I S T H E R E not a suggestion here for us in the counseling relationship?

How frequently in the l i terature we read about the counselor being fully accepting of the counselee--as though this were possible! "Actually, we cannot completely accept anyone," observes Dr. Howe, "although either the literature on the subject of acceptance or the way people read and understand it suggests that acceptance is something that one can give another at will. Underlying this kind of thinking is a very naive concept of man that leaves us unprepared both for all the good we cannot do and for all the evil we can so easily do. To command or to suggest to another the obligation of perfect acceptance is to lay an intolerable and destructive burden upon him. The most accepting person both accepts and re- jects his child and other people. The question is not whether I do or do not a~ccept but rat~ler what is the proportion of acceptance and rejection in relationships with others, m~

I t is at this point that we as clergymen, psychiatrists, social workers, all walk the same road. All of us are human beings Sharing our common frail-

9 Ibid., pp. 8G87. ao Ibid., p. 103.

34 PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY November

ties. While it is true that, by means of training and increased skill, we become more objective toward those with whom we counsel, and so increase our effectiveness as counselors, it remains that all of us, regardless of our professional titles, need to accept the reality of our limitations t o accept everyone as he is. Into our studies or offices come all sorts of people, some intelligent, attrac- tive, warm personalit ies--others, quite the opposite. Wtao of us is not prepared to admit that when the former type of personality comes to see us we find it much easier to accept this individual as he is. But when a person of, shall we say, paranoid tendencies, a defensive attitude, suspicious, comes and sits down with us, we are not at ease with this person. W e do not really accept him as he is. If we accept him as he is, we would feel quite otherwise toward him. Take, for example, the man v~ho comes in who is rebellious against God. Many ministers find it extremely diffi- cult to deal with expressed rebellion against God. Almost immediately they feel it necessary to defend God, to rush to his defense.

In Paul Tournier 's book, The Mean- ing of Persons, he tells of a medical conference in Holland where he heard a Dr. Van Loon "speaking of a fact that had struck him: when his patients attained that degree of honesty to which psychotherapy leads, many of them admitted that they were in revolt against God." To which Dr. Tournier adds, "That is my experience, too; and with all my heart I rejoice when these rebellions are brought out into the light of day, o u t of the deceptive silence behind vehich they have been muttering in secret." And he goes on to remind us that we must not imagine "that one must remain silent about one's feelings of rebellion in order to enter into dialogue with God. Quite

the opposite is the t ru th: it is precisely when one expresses them that a dialogue of truth begins. ''11

I wonder if it is not one of the works of the Holy Spirit in the life of the pastor-counselor to enable him to be accepting of that counselee who pours out his pent-up expressions of rebellion against God ? Of course, if we are en- tertaining secret or hidden elements of rebellion against God within ourselves, we cannot hope to really accept the rebellion in others, And so it may be that one of the first works of the Holy Spirit in the counseling process is that of helping the counselor himself to come to t e rms with his own "silent feelings of rebellion" and thus be free to accept ~he counselee's rebellion. All of this, it seems to me, enters into accepting our humanness in the encounter we call "counseling:" W e are freed from the need to play God; we are free to accept--with l imitat ions--those who come to us for help.

This, of course, leads us into a cor- ollary: if our counselees see us as "human" they are more likely to be free to be human i n this encounter. Wayne Oates in his stimulating book, Anxiety in Christian Experience, relates a marriage counseling interview, at the conclusion of which ~he husband turned to the counselor and said, " I am very grateful to you that you did not t ry to cure us of being human beings!" In turn, the counselor said, "The only way I could have tried that would have been already to have re- fused to accept my own humanity. To do that would have been 'to have usurped the prerogatives of God in your life, and to have attempted to change the way he has made you !,,~2

11 Tournier, The Meaning of Persons, p. 164.

12 Oates, op. clt., p. 35.

1964 H O L Y S P I R I T IN COUNSELING PROCESS 35

6 6 ~ [ ' ~ H E W A Y God has made you" 1 . - - I wonder if these words

might not serve to point us to the con- sideration of a further evidence of the Holy Spirit in the counseling process. The sensitive counseling pastor holds in deepest respect the highest creative work of God's Spirit. He knows something about that which Schweitzer means w~hen he talks about "reverence for life." He firmly belieyes that God has planted within man forces which make for wholeness--heal th--salva- tion. He further believes that when he

is counseling he is serving as an instru- ment by which or through whom God releases ~he power of his Spirit to right that which is wrong. The Spirit, he affirms with one theologian, is "that active, creative vital surging in the created order, inclnding the lives of men." Or as Carroll Wise expresses it, "The Holy Spirit is the life of God in the soul of man, inspiring man toward wholeness. ' 'la

As a counselor he thinks of his job

az Wise, Psychiatry and the B:ible, p. 84.

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as that of working with the Sp i r i t - - cooperating with these forces which urge the organism toward wholeness. In the New Testament, Paul reminds us that every person is a temple of God and that God's Spirit indwells one. The Quaker genius, George Fox, said that "our labor is to bring all men to their own teacher in themselves." The effectiveness of our counseling is determined to a large extent to how deeply we are committed to this truth, and counsel in the light of it.

W e need to be honest with ourselves at this po in t - -as honest as was one counselor in his review of Paul John- son's book, The Psychology of Pastoral Care. The reviewer noted that Dr. Johnson refers to his own approach to counseling in the phrase "responsive counseling." The counselor, to use Johnson's words, is , responsive to every mood, feeling, or attitude expressed. He is to be ready to respond by restating *he feelings implied." (This is, you will recognize, very similar to the Rogerian technique.) The reviewer lifts from the book a short ac- count of a counseling interview which runs like this: " I 've been a minister for three years but I am rather restless. I don't know. Do you think I am cut out for a minister?" To which the counselor replies, "You have some doubts about yourself in this work." Or again, the counselee says, " I ' d t ry to forget everything that happened. That 's the only way. I 'd go mad if I thought much about it." To which the counselor replies, "You feel it 's best to t ry to forget what happened."

Having given this illustration, the reviewer is honest enough to confess, "I cannot imagine myself carrying on a conversation for so long with so little encouragement. ''14 I think all of us can

1*"The Christian Century," March 3, 1954, p. 270.

sympathize with the reviewer, for we have been in similar situations where it seemed that if only we could talk directly to the counselee, we would more quickly arrive at a solution. And yet I wonder if this is not a situation in which we must be trusting of the power of God's Spirit to work in this relationship between the counselor and counselee? All of us, or most of us, find ourselves at times impatient with the slow and what may seem laborious process of this type of counseling. W e live in a world of hurry, of busyness, and we are tempted to hurry the counseling process. W e may have insight into the counselee's problem which we want to pass on to him, and we are prone to become manipulative of the counselee unless we have somehow learned to trust in the guidance of God's Spirit and to ask him to help us with patience to persevere until insight on the part of the counselee begins to emerge. A great deal of our effectiveness as counselors is surely based on how deeply we believe that the Spirit of God is already at work within the counselee---"to will and to do of his good pleasure."

I W O N D E R if this does not also say something to us about our trust

in God's Spir i t to carry on what we with him have begun? W e live in a culture in which success, to a large degree, is determined by "results." There is something within us which seeks evidence of work well done. But in counseling is such evidence always for thcoming--or is it not rather the exception than the rule ? "I don't think we usually know when we've helped someone," said Dr. Saul Rosenschwieg to a group of pastors at Washington Universi ty in St. Louis. Reuel Howe believes that there is a place where we as human beings may have to stop

1964 HOLY SPIRIT IN COUNSELING PROCESS 37

working in order to allow God's Spirit to work directly on the individual. Dr. Howe points out in his book, Man's Need and God's Ac.tion, "The coming of the Holy Spirit brought into being the new creation, the new relationship between God and man . . . . This is a relationship of men caught up into a relationship wi~h God, created by God in order that he may enter into saving encounter with man, a means by which men may experience his gifts of acceptance and love. This means that his acceptance of us is communicated by his Spirit in and through our acceptance of each other. My task of faith as a parent or teacher is to be open to God in order that he may express his acceptance of my child in and through my limited and broken ability to accept him. This would seem to limit God's acceptance, except that he is able to transcend our limitation and do in and through us what we of ourselves are completely incapable of doing. God can act in any way he wants, but he wants to act through us, and he wants us to act in response to him."

Therefore, "our faith is not in ourselves and in what we can do, but in God and what he can do in and through us. W e are his new creation, called to the task of continuing in our genera- tion his reconciling work through the gift of acceptance with men who feel so yery unacceptable. The acceptance of God pointed to through human acceptance, exceeds anything that human acceptance can ever convey, ms

A Christian educator, Edith Agnew, writing to teachers, expressed our need to trust God's Spirit in this way: "Whatever Ghristian character is, helping any child to achieve it takes more than our wisdom. After we parents and teachers have done our best,

is Howe, op. cit., pp. 118-119.

a miracle must still take place. Some- thing happens between the child and God. Just how it happens lies in the realm of mystery. All we can do is to lead our children to the brink of it." By substituting a few words we can adapt this arresting thought to our situation as pastor-counselors: "What - ever Qhristian maturity is, helping any person to come by it takes more than our wisdom. After we as pastors and counselors have done our be s t a miracle must still take place. Something happens between the individual and God. Just how it happens lies in the realm of mystery. All we can do is to lead our people to the brink of it."

T H I S B R I N G S us to the conclud- ing point: when we work with

the Holy Spirit in the counseling process, we do so in the context of a gathered, reconciling fellowship. Pro- fessor Bradley of Hartford Theologi- cal Seminary (quoted earlier) indi- cates that the Holy Spirit works only in w~hat he terms "structural relationships. . . . . We know of the Holy Spirit of God only in and through historical experience of a structural, organic sort. He is to be~ found where there are relationships : relationships between God and man, as at Pentecost or the conversion of Paul or the experience of Wesley at Aldersgate; relationships between man and man, as within the Church when old prejudices are over- come and the Church is renewed wit- ness ~he Church of South India as a prime example of this. ''16

And to these examples of relationships in which the Holy Spirit may be found, we may add that the Spiri t of . God also may be found in the pastor's counseling relationships. In these hu-

16 Bulletin of the Hartford Seminary Foun- dation, op. cit., p. 7.


man situations God's Spirit is at work revealing God's acceptance and for-

giveness. The Spirit reveals God, not only in preaching, not only in the great headline events of his church, but in the quiet of the counseling room. .And the counseling room, symbolically, is only one room of many rooms in God's house--all of them dedicated to our grateful response to God and the edi- fication of God's people. Pastoral counseling takes place within the frame- work of the total church. God's Spirit is at work within the total fellowship of God's people--redeeming, healing, reuniting, making whole. "If the Church, which is t~e assembly of God, has an ultimate significance," wrote Paul Tillich in The N e w Being, "this is its significance: that here the reunion of man to man is pronounced and confessed and realized, even if in fragments and weaknesses and dis- tortions. The Church is the place where the reunion of man with man is an actual event . . . . "1~

Now admittedly the Church is not all that it should or could be as a healing fellowship. We come together as the gathered fellowship to sit in long rows of seats--not really wanting to get involved in another's life, and not wanting another to get involved in ours. Our sense of separation is symptomatic of the depth of our sin. Dr. Reuel Howe tells the story about a patient who, being treated for psychoneurotic behav- ior symptoms, came to the realization, with ~0he help of his psychiatrist, that he needed above all else to be loved. "Where shall I go to get this love I

17 Tillich, The New Being, p. 23. See also Nelson, as quoted in Robert Spike's Tests of a Living Church, p. 21, "The Holy Spirit is henceforth a corporate, not an individual pos- session. The Spirit dwells in the body. Apart from this corporate community, there is no gift of the Holy Spirit."

need?" he asked the doctor. The psychiatrist, himself a churchman, sug- gested, "Why don't you try the church? . . . . I 've been there," was the man's reply.

The ahurch stands under the judg- ment of God, and we repent of our lovelessness and reaffirm again that it is not our church but God's Church-- the beloved community created by the Holy Spirit and the means by which through the Spirit he goes on and on in his endless quest to reunite men with Himself and with one another. We confess ~he sin of the Church in failing to fulfill its God-given mission. But even though the Church has failed, we still work within it, seeking to purify it even as through the Holy Spiri'c we would be purged of all that hinders its healing ministry.

It is our privilege and joy to be responsive to the Holy Spirit within this "structure of relationships"--to use Professor Bradley's term.

I N the Book Christians were of,Jude, advised to pray in f lae Holy

Spirit." The Interpreter's Bible commentary on this passage reads: " . . . for the Spirit alone can teach men how and for what to pray. Calvin says that the Spirit 'arouses' men to pray . . . The Holy Spirit is the inward teacher of the Christian. He helps our spirits to discern the deep things of God. He leads us into all truth. ''18

Would we be doing violence to the biblical text to insert the word "counsel" so that the admonition would read, "counsel in the Holy Spirit"? In all probability the Interpreter's Bible commentator did not have counseling in mind when he wrote, but what he has said is easily adaptable to our use and application: "The Holy Spirit is

is Interpreter's Bible, Vol. 12, pp. 338-339.

1964 HOLY SPIRIT IN COUNSELING PROCESS .39

the inward teacher of the counselor (and counselee). He helps our spirits to discern the processes by which God works in human life. He leads us into insight."

One wri ter in the field, Carol Mur- 1Mly, goes so far as to suggest that we think of our counseling as being "Spir- it-centered." "As the counselee learns to look at his real feelings he grows in self-knowledge. He becomes able to trust his own experience and take re- sponsibility for revising his system of values. The counselor's task is to climb into his counselee's private world, as it were, and look through his eyes - - an experience of sharing that for a sensitive therapist must surely become an experience almost of mystical union."19

When we speak thus, are we getting too far afield from the empirical ? Some would reply, "Yes, you are getting on dangerous ground-- the danger inher- ent in all mysticism." Others will say, "Maybe no t - - fo r while we ought at all times to work in terms of empirically arrived-at data, still we need to remem- ber that we are human beings working with human beings. To quote Dr. Gun- trip, British psychotherapist, "The fundamental human problems do not lie in the region of the intellect. They lie in the region of our personal needs and emotional relationships . . . W e shall be closer to the heart of the problem (of counseling) if we think not of 'Guiding the Perplexed' but of 'Suc- couring the Unloved.' Wha t we need to know is how to remedy the ravages in human nature due to deprivation of love. ''2o

And we are reminded by that great soul, David Roberts, that in our coun-

10 Murphy, "The Ministry of Counseling," PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY, Dec. 1957, p. 20.

2o Guntrlp, op. cit., p. 21.

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seling work "it is easy to fall into the blunder of regarding dispassionateness as an end in itself and thus to become blind to the dehumanizing consequences of the blunder. W e do not have to choose between cold objectivity and blind feeling. Indeed, failure to estab- lish organic mutually enriching con- nections between reason and emotion is neurotic and we have seen how the therapist must combine the clarity of the scientist with the sympathy of the father-confessor in trying to deal with neuroses. Our scientific studies of re-

40 PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY

N O V E M B E R 15-26 Nat iona l Re ta rded

Children's W e e k

ligion and of cultural ideologies have made us thoroughly aware of the perils of illusion and fanaticism. But have they made us adequately aware of the peril of a scientific or philosophical detach- ment which is not concerned with the human consequences of its findings ?-21

S E V E R A L years ago "The Chris- tian Century" carried a humorous

article by Rollin J. Fairbanks under the title, "Counseling Tadpoles." "Ac- cording to the Bible," wrote Dr. Fai r - banks, "counseling began in the Garden of Eden when Adam sought to help Eve with some of her emotional problems. Apparently Adam was no more successful with that first client of his than many of us have been with her descendants today." F rom that point he proceeds in humorous fashion to sketch four stages of counseling through which we have moved--none of them meeting the real needs of the people, Fairbanks feels. H e wants us to move on to a fifth stage, which he says is so naive that he questions his wisdom in even having it put into print, but he

~1 Roberts, Psychotherapy and a Christian View of Man, p. 59.

offers it in dead seriousness. "My suggestion," he says, "is simply that the counselor love his clients, care about them, pray for, not over them. Give them a real right hand of fellowship when they come to him with their hats in their hands and their pride in their pockets. Let them experience a healthy friendship and not just hear about it. Let the counselor learn and live the language of relationship. God's love means little to the man or woman who has never known love in this world. I know about the dangers of transfer- ence-- they are very real. But in utmost reverence I challenge every counselor tO stick his neck out. I guess I really mean his heart. And be a fool if necessary, a fool for Christ 's sake. As Reuel Howe has pointed out in Man's Need and God's Action, we all need to be at one with someone. I t is within the con- trolled, yet compassionate counseling relationship that mature inter-personal social skills can be learned. ''~2

Paul Johnson in his Psychology of Pastoral Care says, "The skill of the pastor 's leadership is not so important as the atmosphere created by his attitude toward people."

Through having come to terms with himself as a human being, accepting his counselees for what they are, working with God-implanted internal forces urging the organism on toward wholeness - -and doing it all within the context of a gathered, redemptive fellowship---the pastoral counselor can know something of what it means to experience the Holy Spirit in the counseling process.

,2 "The Christian Century," Jan. 2, 1957, pp. 19-20.

M O T H E R L Y love is l ike an act of grace; if it is there, it is a b less ing- - i f it is not there, it cannot be created. - -EPacE FaOM~.

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The holy spirit in the counseling process