A Sound Mind — Don McClure

Turn to Philippians chapter 3 while I talk about the Sermon on the Mount and I've decided to take tonight to kind of respond a little bit to some of the things that may be that a few things that have been spoken to me since I've started on the Sermon on the Mount and Perhaps some things that I think people are a little troubled with anyway.

And that are wise for us perhaps to look at it because I am fully aware. That what Jesus is saying here in the Sermon on the Mount and particularly in the Beatitudes Flies right in the face of modern psychology modern psychology, of course there tells us how wonderful we are and how good we are and The fact that you know, somebody would come along and tell us that that's not true.

Human Sinfulness and the Value Found in God

When you pick up the Bible essentially the Bible tells us we're too bad to be true. And essentially it tells us how hopeless we are outside of God and the love of God and the redemptive work of Christ.

And the only thing any good about any of us ever was initially we were just a hunk of clay. That was filled with God in the first place. And that's what made man anything at all. That's what made us in his image and without him.

We're just a hunk of clay and worthless. But in him the the value is unbelievable, but I do know that in the sense of psychology a lot of people struggle because I think even a lot of Christians have somehow or another we easily, you know get caught up and there's a lot of psychological terms and things that we feel about and and that I think sometimes it's good and I just want to deal with some things a little tonight in the sense of the issue of self and That we have been discussing so much through the Beatitudes Sociologists as well.

Narcissism and the Modern Culture of Self

They tell us that the age in which we're living right now. And of course, I don't know if that's How accurate all these things are but this one seems pretty accurate to me is that they tell us that we're living in the age of narcissism and Essentially that in what narcissism is it it's a it's an age is just described as an excitement essentially about ourselves.

And narcissus if you're not familiar and but in Greek theology, there's a beautiful Young, you know youth there who? Who fell in love with his own image so much so as he's looking there in the water and he sees the reflection of himself he literally pined away and More to emphasize into Narcissus and he just froze and there he was so hooked into himself in his own self beauty.

Interestingly enough the word narcissus in the in the dictionary is not only of course that which I just read from Greek mythology. But it's also interestingly enough. It's known as a plant that nodes for it known for its narcotic properties and it's also known as a Hallucinatory experience with yourself and Essentially when somebody starts to the ultimate hallucination I suppose is the ones that we oftentimes have about ourselves and how great we are.

And how wonderful we are and how good we are, but sociologists tell us that this is a characteristic of our age. Unlike perhaps a generation or two ago when we came out of the war Which I was born after it but those that grew up under those that were in it there was a selflessness about it and the determination there whatever you had to do to serve your country and The life was there it was way beyond itself and the value of it.

It was something there that somewhat of there the ability to surrender itself and there was a generation understood that. Following that we kind of went into a little bit of the hippie generation or the weed Generation and whether it was Martin Luther and we will overcome and and a lot of the things within just the movements of the 60s and the Sociological movements of people there in the lovins and the hippie a thing that kind of said we but then it's kind of changed into a me generation and and we live in this day of narcissism and Something that goes right along so wonderfully well with narcissism is modern psychology and humanistic psychology it caters to a narcissistic person.

Tremendously, it just fits right alongside it and I want to look tonight a little bit and deal with the Bible and its response to three major schools of humanistic psychology and In how the what the Bible has to say about them and because we are certainly living in a world of.

Freud and the Past as an Explanation for Human Behavior

We're Sigmund Freud though. He died What I think 1959 or something but His effect has been tremendous on the world. I suppose but essentially if you're familiar with with Sigmund Freud is that his Psychology his philosophy of life to me could be boiled down very very simply and has been by many Into it just a very simple sort of a concept and that is essentially that you are what you are has been determined by your past and Essentially what it says is that whatever is going on with me?

Whatever is wrong with me? Say this psychology Freudian psychology. It offers me and allows me the opportunity to continue on in this narcissistic feeling in this self-love even because Essentially no matter what it is that is wrong with me.

I can blame all of my failures on something in my past and That's essentially what Freud had so much to say and Just to give you some of the terms that he really used and brought out to the forefront of psychology that's used so much today.

But there's words like psychoneurosis Which is defined by as a functional disorder in which the feelings of anxiety and obsessional thoughts compulsive acts and physical complaints. But they're without objective evidence of disease in other words a person has all these obsessions and and these difficulties and anxieties And compulsive things, but they can't find anything physiologically wrong with him.

And so it's psychoneurosis. It's a mental thing that is going on within them. Then. Of course, there's psychosis and Sigmund Freud as you are probably aware is the the father of Psychoanalysts and but in psychosis it's a mental disorder characterized by symptoms as delusions or Hallucinations that indicate impaired to contact with reality and essentially they're a person that's in some form of psychosis.

They're just they're out of it. Do we you know you're walking around and they're carrying on some form of life or lifestyle or communication and they touch reality now and then. But oftentimes they go right back out of it.

There's paranoia, which is a mental disorder characterized by Some systematized pardon me delusions Ascribing hostile intentions to other persons and it's often intense with some sort of mission in life and a paranoid person they go around and Somebody's after them.

Somebody's looking for them. They may know who they are they may not know who they are, but they kind of live under the Hostility there that's after them and they're there we call them paranoid then there's schizophrenia Which is a severe mental disorder associated with brain abnormalities and typically evidence by disorganized speech and behavior and delusions and hallucinations and Yeah, a lot of these things are things that were pushed very strongly by Sigmund Freud and Interestingly enough some of the things that he said though were a Lot of people they just don't know it.

But one of his fundamental attributes of his whole thinking of his whole philosophy in psychology and These are his words, but and it led to his analysis of dreams. They led to the discoveries of infantile sexuality in the so-called openness complex which constitutes the erotic attachment of the child for the parent of the opposite sex together with hostile feelings towards the other parent and Essentially What he believed is rooted in the heart of every child.

And then this goes on this this how life starts when you come into it is that usually? there even in just a normal birth that child has a sexual obsession with the parent of its opposite sex and it also has a hostility or desire To murder the one of the same sex because they're in competition with them.

Oedipus who? He was a legendary king of the thieves of the Thebes a son of Elias in Jocasta and he fulfilled a prophecy made at his birth by unwittingly killing his father and marrying his mother and This was the root of essentially of where Freud started so much of his psychology.

It started right in the fact that at birth there were these hostilities and if somehow or another these hostilities are not dealt with during life, you will carry them over to other people and. But this is the this is the root essentially of what Freud had to say this is what started his whole process of Saying you are the result of what has been all that has been done unto you, but it started the day you were born.

And in with this bizarre concept now, I'll tell you I have a beautiful mother, but I never thought of marrying her and and Then I could see why my dad did but I haven't wanted to compete with that and and I've never wanted to kill my father.

Now there were times as a teenager I wouldn't mind if somebody else did it maybe but the but I grew out of that. But that had nothing to do with the way I was born that had to do with my own rebellion to him.

When I was a teenager, but the but there to start looking there and a to. Essentially he's now saying that we are spending so much of our life transferring all of these feelings and emotional processes.

That we start in childhood with in hostilities over to to other people and we need to learn how to deal with With these things and this is what his psychology is so much in and so essentially what Freud was all about as I already said.

Is that people basically are the result of what has been and he simply basically had you know? His analysis was is that how you were born and how you were raised and how you were loved and if your mother loved you.

And changed you regularly and your father. You know is there and you had food to eat and you had a relatively good home and you had all of these sorts of things around then you could be a normal person and and.

But if you had all sorts of bad things happening to you and you had difficulties and you had all whatever it is. That's happened to you. You are a product of what has happened to you. So whatever it is.

It's now the result of it. It's interesting last Sunday morning Chuck mentioned on how that when he decided to leave Corona and felt led to come down here and K was so upset because the ministry in the church was going so well there and why.

Would he want to leave that to come down here to something struggling so much and she set up for him to go out to lunch. With a psychiatrist who took him out and wanted to know. If you know if his mother loved him and he loved his mother and if he had a nice home and fed regularly and all.

That sort of thing and and as I sat there and thought about it. It's not myself. Well that just goes to show that you can be fed well and have a good mother and a good home and still be Crazy, but anyway, they know I'm just but it has but we have these ways where we blame everything on somebody on.

Whatever it is that is going on within our life. That's what K told me by the way. I didn't there's none of my opinions but. But essentially one of the things that today is so prevalent in Humanistic psychology is essentially that the result of this is that a person never has to stop loving themself.

Never has to deal with his inadequacies essentially because they could have all blamed on others in the circumstances that happened in their life and However, I grew up. It's my mother's fault or it's my father's fault.

Or it's that person down the street that abused me or it's that teacher that neglected me or. It's that person that turned me in the wrong direction at whatever time and all of these other things that happen.

We have somebody to blame it on his time goes on. But interestingly enough even today's own world of psychology who are promoting these very same things. Are the people who are also realizing that they're in great trouble teaching these things.

I say this because the American Psychological Association Recently, they did an internal study on itself to evaluate its own effectiveness. It was called the Maurer's a study of emotionally disturbed people.

In other words those people that have some form of psychotic depression going on within them and this was done by the American Psychological Association this wasn't done by some outside, you know group trying to analyze them.

This was they analyzing themself. But it among the group that they studied of those people that went to psychotherapy 43 of them got well within a year. People that went to clinical counseling 49 of them got well within a year.

People that went to visit a psychiatrist 53 got well within a year. But those people that went to nobody at all 63 got well within a year. In other words the very people that were supposed to be administering the cure were actually contributing to the disease they're prolonging it and There is they were taking people into the analysis of themselves and of their life.

Being very narcissistic. Let's go back and talk about you and what has happened to you and where you have been and who did this these things to? You by the way, did you turn to Philippians 3 that I mentioned that?

Okay, we're not we're not going there yet, I just wanted to get ready but the but the interesting thing is is that When you do look at psychology and itself and the roots of what it is really saying. It's not doing a job.

I remember years ago when I was still on staff here back in the 70s one day I had an appointment in my book with a psychiatrist who came to see me and. And as he came in and sat down he came in and he actually wanted to talk about a certain young girl.

That I had quote-unquote treated. And I thought well, what do you mean? I don't know what you're talking about. I don't treat anybody here and he said well then he and he told me about this certain girl in her name.

And as he talked about her, I realized oh, I've met her. I know she's she's been to the studies and We got talking about her and I said why what is it? What do I do you ask about her? And he said well, I'm a psychiatrist and he said I have been working with her for I think it was close to two years.

And every two weeks and here she has been coming and I've been working with her and she is clinically schizophrenic. Hopelessly skinned schizophrenic and there is as I've been working with her for so long.

But a while back just out of I don't even know why I said it was one of the weirdest things I've ever said. He says but I just suggested to her one time. When I'd virtually given up on all sorts of other things to say to her I said why don't you see if you can find God and.

Then we left and you know, she went on about a businessman a couple weeks later. She came in for appointment and we talked and I realized she was doing much better. She just seemed to be having a very very good day.

I kind of thought and wrote it down very clear thinking in and one of those just great days and I noted that in the report. But then when she came to see me the next time and we sat down and we began to talk.

I realized this girl was normal. There was as I began to discuss and began to prod and began to do to talk to her about certain things that had always Produced certain behavioral patterns and memories and attitudes and problems.

They were all gone. She was entirely transformed. There was something about her and I finally asked her. I said, wait a minute. What did what is going on with you? What has happened. And she smiled and she said well I did what you told me.

And he said well, what was that? I said, I couldn't even remember it. She said I found God. He said you did where did you find her? And he said Calvary Chapel and he's down there, you know in the. And as he talked with her and met with her he realized something unbelievably profound it happened to her.

He'd never run anything like this so much. So he's so moved by it. He came down and had to talk about it. He ended up in here telling me a story, which was quite a long story. But essentially himself once wanted to serve God.

Actually went to seminary and in the process of going to seminary went to a very liberal seminary where they struggled so much with the Bible he actually shifted out of their theology department and in their school of psychology.

Graduated from there went on got an MD and then became a psychiatrist later on because he felt he could help people better. But then he sat there and he watched he started coming to church here. And then he he had his wife that he came with him.

There was just this precious woman's first time. She came she received Christ. She was just head-over-heels for the Lord. Just so thrilled I'll never forget one day she picked up her Bible and she couldn't get enough of it and one day she came she asked me.

She said I don't understand that. Can you please tell me what the book of Job is all about and. And I can remember him just smiling because he knew all of this. He knew how to pronounce the book of Job.

But he's just smiling to realize she had more life in him than he'd ever dreamed or forgotten. He could have ever had in himself. But as he watched this whole thing, I'll never get one day he told me he said, you know.

All these years have been practicing. And all of these years have been working in psychiatry. And he says I've come to the realization that all we really know how to do it. Very best is diagnosed, but we don't know how to heal, you know that so I don't know how to heal but I know who does it and.

The Gospel’s Answer to the Past

The wonderful thing is is that the Bible has you know. When we look at our past and all the issues of our past the Bible has an answer about it. And that's why I've asked you to turn to Philippians and to find out what is biblical psychology if there is such a term.

But when you look at the bit the past, what does the Bible have to say about me in my past Philippians 3 13? Paul writes he says brethren. I caught my account not myself to have apprehended but this one thing I do.

Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things that are before. Here Paul simply looked there and it's an amazing thing there that without a huge discussion about it he simply looks there and he says something has happened within the the Framework and the the method of thinking within a born-again Christian that they're actually capable of forgetting the things that are past.

Essentially the whole thrust of the New Testament is just simply tells us that our past has been done away with. Our sins have been forgiven and they are forgotten. Biblical psychology essentially what it tells me to do with my past is to confess it and To bury it to leave it behind and Paul is such an interesting person when you stop and look at him.

He had what a lot of people would call a pretty difficult past. We know from Paul's own testimony. He was a killer a murder caused tremendous pain and suffering and countless families and Acts 224, you know, probably 22 for Paul says and I was I persecuted this way unto the death.

Binding and delivering unto prisons both men and women. He said I persecuted people to the very death. I killed them and he says and then I also delivered men and women to prison in Acts 26 9. He says I verily thought of myself.

That I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Paul says my life at one point I was adamantly opposed to the name of Jesus Christ to living for him to thinking about him to surrendering him.

I could care less who he was whatsoever. And he says in the result of that in this rebellion from God in this distaste for God and this rejection of God. The things of which I did in Jerusalem and the many of the Saints.

Did I shut up in prison having received authority the chief priests and when they were put to death? I gave voice against them and I punished them often and in every synagogue and compelled them to blaspheme and he and being Exceedingly mad against them.

I persecuted them under strained cities. Paul said I couldn't stop running. I hated Christians. I hated Christianity. I killed them. I imprisoned them. I actually got people to blaspheme There in the name of Christ to turn away from him.

I was so hated. I was so motivated. I was so destroyed. I was so rebellious so far away from God. No wonder in one sense Paul he says I am the least of the Apostles and not Meet to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God.

Paul had essentially within his memory one that for a lot of us. Maybe we've had difficult things and a lot of rebellions in our life. But I wonder how many people we would look and say I've murdered how many people have we thrown in prison?

How many families have we destroyed Paul? He had done it to countless families and homes and marriages. How many children said had he made orphans out of a multitude of them and yet at the same time here Paul when he came to?

Christ rather than having to go back and go through all sorts of psychotherapy. You have to go through all sorts of things of what would cause you to do this. What was going on within you? How are you raised?

What was what are the compelling factors and all of this? And Paul was somebody there that he not only did a lot to other people a lot of people did things to him. He said I you know. More in stripes and labors.

He says more abundant in stripes. He says above measure in prisons more often frequent in deaths often of the Jews five times I've received 40 stripes lest one thrice. I was beaten with rods. Once I was stolen thrice.

I suffered a shipwreck a night in the day. I've been in the deep in journeys often in perils of the waters perils of the robbers perils of my own countrymen perils of the heathen perils in the city perils in the wilderness perils in the sea perils of false brethren in weakness and painfulness watching often in hunger and thirst and in fastings often cold and.

Naked here Paul was a guy you look back at his life and you look at what people did to him. You look at the abuse that he had gone through. I mean he's times literally stripes 39. You know less one there are five times beaten with rods in prison more time than he had a memory of.

Couldn't even tell you you know the the prisons that he'd been in. And how many times he'd been in them and and there are perils of his land see countrymen. You know Jews anybody everybody Paul do you talk about a guy who could be paranoid and be justified?

It could be Paul the whole world's after him, but yet at the same time here when he came to Jesus Christ. Essentially what the Bible has to say. Essentially is that no matter what it is that has happened to you no matter what you have done to others.

And I'm sure that there are Many of us when we look back the things that we know that we have done not just consciously or desired to do. But the things that we have actually carried out the pain the struggle the heartache the grief that we have brought people the the abuse the outright wicked things that have done in our own hearts and lives and behavior and They've got to be tremendous and the things that have been done to many of us.

Some of us may be growing up in homes or a great abuse. Great, you know, they're painful memories. So an extensive things that are happened, you know to life. But essentially what the Bible has to say is that something in Jesus past in what he did on the cross.

And what he what happened with him it outweighs everything that is in my past. It says there that what happens on the cross by Jesus Christ was so awesome and was so tremendous. Is that everything that I have ever done in everything that has ever been done to me has been entirely Forgiven at the cross and it outweighs the past it overcomes the past it transforms the crap the past.

Therefore I don't need to deal with the past. I don't need even so much to discuss it. The cross of Jesus Christ is so total it is so awesome. It is so all-encompassing. It is so overpowerful. Overpowering that it covers the sins of the entire world.

And all the sins that I've ever even done or had done to me and here Paul. He looked at that and he when he saw the cross it was so magnificent. It was so powerful. He could simply look and say forgetting those things that are past.

And I think one of the most wonderful things that ever happens to a Christian is that when we're actually able to take all of These little things that we've held on to for our life. These these for hurts and pains that people have done to us.

These things that we kind of hold on to like some sort of a little teddy bear, but you see this was done to me. Don't you know what has happened to me and this and we remember it and we think of it and we concentrate on it.

But the Bible has to say I don't care where you've been I don't care what you've done. You can drop that you can forget what you have done and you can forget what has been done to you. And you mean to say in a sense you maybe you know, you just drop it exactly you can forget it exactly.

All it takes I believe is one look at Jesus. One understanding one moment with Jesus when you pick up your Bible and you look at it all and you realize. How Jesus so often he'd walk up and he'd find himself there with a woman who'd had five husbands.

Jesus’ Power to Transform Troubled Lives

Can you imagine her memories? Could you imagine the things that she had gone through in her life and they're the woman the husband she now has man. She now had wasn't her husband either. But here this woman who'd be out there getting her water at the middle of the day.

She of course wouldn't come down when the rest of the women in the city Would be drawing their water. She had no friends. She had no Relationships. She had no nothing meaningful. She was lonely and rejected.

She was known for who she was and there is you can imagine all of it. But imagine there with all of these hurts and all these rejections and all these difficulties one moment and seen truly the face of Jesus.

She was able to run to town and say come see the man who told me all I ever did. She was able to and it says there at the end of the chapter that many of the men of the town Believed on Jesus because of the testimony the woman who said come see the man who told me all I ever did.

She was so free she could actually look at her past. You would think if a woman came to town This woman of all people and looked at the men and said come see the man who told me all I ever did. She said you want to talk about that?

Hello, what are you doing? But they saw in her obviously it's as if that woman it was gone. She was somebody else that came in and she was so free from her past and all that she had ever done. That the men of the town flooded out.

To see if such a thing could happen to them and many of them Believed because of the Liberty that they saw. Can you imagine a man laying by a pool for 38 years. 38 long years? 38 long years of watching Everybody else live and play and grow up and get married and have families and have businesses have friends productive lives.

Meantime for 38 years you lay there. Why what have I done? What's been done unto me and Yet there a moment in the face of Jesus. It's all gone. Rise, take up your bed and walk into whole new newness of life.

Oh wait. I just can't move on you. You mean don't you don't you know what I've been through don't you know what I'm troubled with don't you know what's gone on? But the face in the power of Jesus a woman with an issue of blood.

She spent everything she'd had in some 12 years victimized by this because of it. She couldn't go to temple couldn't go to worship had to stay away from people declare herself unclean. Everything she had all of her wealth was gone long since spent on doctors now There she is an absolute loneliness nobody to help her nowhere to go and with one last hope after 12 years of this.

She just dreams if I could only touch the heavens garment. I've seen something in him so powerful I believe it can deal with the past and the moment she touched that. Her life was changed gone. Woman, you know seven demons years and years of being tormented day and night.

Oh the agony. Oh the insecurity. Oh. What a story one after another as Jesus came along and touched them. But as soon as they saw who he was it over powered everywhere. They've been everything that had been done to them.

The Cross Overcomes the Past

That's the message of the cross. If we don't understand that and we're trying to deal with our past With any other way and we're going into the end of the psychology or dealing with the past. It isn't going to work.

But here when people met Jesus there in his presence it prevailed over all of the past. Entirely and as Paul says if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. All things have passed away and behold all things have become new.

And the wonderful thing is that when we stop and realize the on one hand psychology it kind of looks and it tries. You know to take people there to the healing of their memories that was. Seemed like in the 80s a real, you know, you got to go back and be healed of your memories.

And boy, that's a cesspool. Why get into it? But the biblical Christianity essentially takes us to the healer of our memories. Takes us there to a be who looks at us and transforms our life but Freudian psychology it simply tries to deal with the past but it's all by human effort a secondary of Modern psychology humanistic psychology that has actually been around a lot.

Phenomenology and the Future Self

This is I think it's still growing. It's rapidly growing on the scene. It was actually started by a man named Edmund Yes Has Searle who interestingly enough was born the same year as Freud died one year earlier than he did and.

But these two men had two schools of psychology that were entirely opposite Freud essentially was. You know who Freudian and humanistic and you are a result of the past. But Edmund was a man that he was the founder of what is known today as phenomenology.

And it's essentially a radical alternative to Freudian psychology. That says we're influenced by the past and with phenomenology, which is huge today. At least I'm sure as big as Freudian, but it is something that it actually takes the exact opposite perspective and it says no you aren't so much influenced by the past as you are actually more influenced by the future as you Believe it to be than you are the past.

And this is essentially what phenomenology is and it's been around in various forms for a long time. But he really brought it all together it. It doesn't say so much that you know that you're not what you were.

But you are who you hope to become. Is fundamentally what he had to say and that the real? Process is is that how I perceive the future and. And Many of us maybe grew up with a little you know nursery stories that were kind of Psychology based on phenomenology, you know the little train.

I think I can I think I can I think I can you know. The little thing you're gonna do it. You're gonna do it I'd tell you you know and these wonderful little things that says you can do anything and tries to get you focused and Norman Vincent Peale picked up on phenomenology when you know.

Essentially there when the power of positive thinking and knowing his thing was who cares who you were. It's where you're going and when you let your mind get let loose on where you can go and you really begin to perceive the future.

That's the thing and you know Napoleon Hill grabbed on to it and took it and you know with his thinking grow rich. See yourself as a millionaire. You may be flat broke and have and lived in poverty. But that's not gonna help you and you can go back into that forever.

But as soon as you begin to think and you're rich, I'm gonna be a millionaire a billionaire I'm gonna run the world and that's essentially I mean he had the whole country reading his books. And then the church, of course has picked up on it in positive confession in this theology that comes along Essentially a based just on phenomenology there that's good of there I'm going to have this positive confession of what is gonna go on and what I have and I'm gonna be rich.

I'm gonna be successful. I'm gonna be great and it's just a rehash essentially of all of these, you know, these other things and a Lot of parents. I think sometimes we you know, we're phenomenologists with our little children, you know, Johnny, you're great.

You're gonna be wonderful. You're going to do good, you know. And we keep telling that hoping one day he kind of picks up on it and I don't think you shouldn't. You know, it's not good to look at him necessarily say Johnny.

You're too bad to be true. But the but that is that's a greater truth about Johnny then you're great but the but essentially Lot of us were we use a lot of phenomenology. To me. I mean like when I play golf, I'm a phenomenologist.

I'm definitely not a Freudian. I do not want to respond to how I played in the past. I when I get up to tee up that ball You know, I mean I'm a phenomenologist. Hey, the future is greater than anything that's ever happened so far for this ball I tell you, you know I can get out and on the Golf course there can be a whole lake in a little teeny island out there for the green to shoot on to and I'm a Phenomenologist, I'm gonna take the newest most beautiful golf ball because I'm hey if I it's a negative confession.