You certainly don’t need religion to have a sense of guilt. You don’t even need religion to be totally overcome by guilt. All you need is a sense of an ideal self—some version of a hero-project going on in your head—and you are a lifelong candidate for guilt. The atheist is always tempted to believe…
“No one can be wholly and indivisibly in the present,” writes Kierkegaard, “before he is finished with the future.” With this single line Kierkegaard exposes profound implications of both faith and how to conquer anxiety. In Kierkegaard’s most spiritual works, the “Upbuilding Discourses”, he battles with the question, “How do I know I have faith…
“Cognito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am), set the tone for Western thought for the last 400 years. When Descartes first penned these words in 1637 he meant to establish a sure ground on which to develop a method for finding truth. What could be more beyond doubt than the phenomenon of one’s own…
“The problem with the black American psyche,” my roommate in college informed me, “is that we don’t know where we came from.” He explained to me that when Africans were pulled from their homes throughout West Africa during the transatlantic slave trade, they did not bring with them any trace of their ethnic-communal-regional roots. Once…
If you were a Puritan living in the Massachusetts Bay colony of the 17th century and were found committing adultery, your punishment would be to wear a large, red letter “A” on your chest. This allowed everyone in town to know what kind of sinner you were and how to shame you accordingly. It meant…
I was surprised when I first heard that our local Antiochian Orthodox Church decided to close all services for the remainder of Lent. I was even more surprised to learn moments later that all Antiochian Orthodox Churches in the United States were to be closed by order of our archbishop. Soon after that I was…
Living the Christian faith is based on a practice of solitude, a spirit of stillness, a pedagogy of experience, and victory through suffering. For some Christians these ideas are at best outdated, and at worst nonsense. The popular vibe given off by many today is that Christianity is something like an ongoing victory lap of…
There seems to be a growing interest in ancient philosophy for many today. I can’t help but wonder how much of this has to do with the increasing levels of anxiety we face, anxiety seemingly impervious to modern remedies. One of the rising stars in this revival is Stoicism. Let me say at the beginning…
After church a few Sundays ago I found myself once again roaming around our little church library. I go up there from time to time to see what’s new. There’s never anything new. We’ve had the same books for years; I just like being in the presence of books, so alas, I roam. My typical…
Mutual understanding is the lifeblood of successful marriages. Take any successful relationship you know of and you can bet they succeed because they’ve learned the art of communicating. Without it even the best relationships shipwreck. But as every man who has ever tried to argue with a woman, and every woman who has ever tried…
Let me make a quick personal note on the word self-care. In truth, I really detest this word, and I think there is good reason why it took thousands of years for it to find its way into the vernacular. Not only does the word sound wimpy, it sounds selfish; it sounds like the sort…
Self-care should not be an attempt to overpower or conquer oneself, but rather the free experience of oneself. If conquering yourself—i.e., making yourself not angry, not sad, not nervous, etc.—is your primary aim, then chances are, however you go about the conquering, you will only succeeding in fortifying whatever neurosis you were struggling with in…
“I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium… a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of…
Rarely a day goes by when my newsfeed isn’t running at least a half dozen articles on mental health. I’m a mental health counselor, and most of these articles bore me to tears; I can only imagine how others take them. The truth is, mental health articles are about as fun to read as they…
My wife recently put me on a mandatory book buying fast. Begrudgingly, I complied, but figured I’d make the most of it by rereading some old books that I haven’t touched in years. All in all, it’s been a highly productive fast (finally we have enough money left over to spend on senseless, impulsive purchases…
Lots of people have taken the labor to define Christian fundamentalism, so I will resist the urge to do so here. Instead, I will attempt to describe the fundamentalist personality in a way that will make it unmistakable for those who have personal experience with it. You’ve met him. He’s that guy who starts a…
Driving on the freeway in Tulsa a few years back, I saw a billboard advertising a wildly popular church in the area. The ad featured a photo taken from behind the pastor who was looking out on the congregation. The pastor had both fists in the air as if celebrating a touchdown. The caption read:…
First off, show up. Don’t ask permission, just show up. It’s always difficult to know just what to say when a friend or loved one tells you of a personal tragedy. The usual responses of “I’m so sorry,” or “what can I do?” are often not helpful. Both of these, though usually coming from a…
“Can you think of anything more frightful,” writes Kierkegaard, “than that it might end with your nature being resolved into a multiplicity, that you really might become many, become, like those unhappy demoniacs, a legion, and you thus would have lost the inmost and holiest thing of all in a man, the unifying power of…
It’s another Monday morning at Hodges Bend. The coffee is more chocolate tasting than usual, maybe it’s just because I didn’t drown it in cream this time. The usual good music has been replaced by an odd and uninspiring band. It’s one of those technically talented bands that tries too hard to prove itself with…
Fight your feelings if you want, but you will lose. You will lose because that small domain occupied by your conscious self is no match for the far larger more powerful unconscious self. The good news is that one’s unconscious mind does not desire a fight, but rather peace. The trouble is that it is…
"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced" -Kierkegaard
Doctrine Matters
Neither polemic nor compromise, but engagement
