Psychological and Spiritual Foundations of Belief Systems Therapy

The Church Environment And Spiritual Growth In A Postmodern Context

Gregory V. Wilson, February, 2000

Contemporary trends in the postmodern culture lead to the fragmentation of social and intrapsychic narratives. The church
needs to respond in such a way that community and intrapsychic continuity is nurtured and sustained. I first examine western cultural
trends focusing on social and theological perspectives on postmodern narrative fragmentation. The social and economic trends of
postmodern culture diminish the capacity of the imagination and highlight the need for a healthy imagination for spiritual maturation.
I then review the psychological development of the healthy imagination, and develop a Biblical anthropology, contrasting it with the
anthropology of post-modern culture.

Introduction
Psychological and spiritual health is characterized by the experience of intimacy, care, and being known by others and God at
the deepest reaches of one’s humanity. The prophetic dimension of pastoral care can offer a challenge to the church to become a
“good enough” environment designed to nurture its members’ imaginations so that psychological and spiritual health can evolve. As a
pastoral counselor, I have heard many stories congruent with my own experiences from persons who have been involved in church for
years but have not found it to be a safe place to discuss either their woundedness or their current difficulties within themselves and in
relationships. When the church fails to attend to the woundedness of its members, it contributes to and perpetuates the spiritual illness
of our time. My goal in this paper is to establish a method to address this failure and to describe a religious educational support group
process that attends to church members’ woundedness using gospel principles.

The religious educational support group process developed to accomplish this task is a form of discipleship that is focused on
Christian spiritual formation. The process includes reflection and use of the imagination, interpretation of history, and facilitation of
cognitive and emotional, personal and transgenerational continuity. I have demonstrated the effectiveness of this praxis in a church
setting in a supportive, educational small group focusing on spiritual transformation. I will illustrate the change in persons by
reporting here the group participants’ statements about themselves at the beginning of the group process and, in the conclusion of the
paper their comments about their experience in the group.
The group that I focus on grew out of a workshop which I presented in May 1998. The workshop explored the dynamics of
anger and resentment in relationships, and traced life themes of anger, individually and transgenerationally, allowing the creation of
alternative responses. The workshop mapped out family of origin relationships and how they influenced the development of
selfbeliefs, both positive and negative. Once we identified negative self-beliefs, we explored the images, memories, and internal
dialogue that structured those beliefs, and how those beliefs are relationally maintained. The second half of the workshop placed the
identified selfbeliefs in dialogue with beliefs from scripture that claim persons to be blessed, known, good, and loved. Six persons
from that workshop said that they would like to continue this process. The group has been meeting for nine months, consists of two
married couples and two women, one single and one married. Below is a reflective summary at the nine month mark of how four of
the group participants saw themselves at the beginning of their group experience.

Group Participant 1. I came to the workshop and then the group out of desperation. I began to realize I only saw things from
my point of view and I would take things personally and not separate others’ personal problems from mine. I had a poor self image
that I received as a child by the negative people around me and I spent my life blaming others.
Participant 2. I was focused on others and did not listen to them. I believed all others were critical of my actions or behaviors. I
have yet to come to grips with how critical my father was to me and what that means for me today. I was somewhat uncomfortable
around the church and not much interested in what I heard around the church.
Participant 3. I do not have the desire within myself to change. I am too caught up in my defenses, (addictive behavior and self
judgment etc.) against pain, to allow myself the time to reflect or ponder what is going on inside. Prior to the group I could not see
myself as other than an abused person.
Participant 4. I came to the workshop and group because my husband and I began to relate angrily like my parents. I struggle with
being inpatient and lack the ability to stop relating angrily. I realized I was not taking risks in relationships and I got off the track of
recovery and lost a sense of the resources available to me.

Imagination, Fragmentation, and congregational pastoral care: The Context of the Church
For the members of the Christian community to effectively care for, educate, and make disciples, the imaginations of the
members must be healthy and functioning. One of the symptoms of living in a fragmented culture is the failure of the imagination. A
fragmented culture not only exhibits a failure of the imagination but also lacks a coherent narrative necessary to provide values that
structure society.
In discussing the nature of narrative, Michael White and David Epston, two family therapists who are pioneering narrative
theory, state that, “meaning is derived through the structuring of experiences into stories, and that the performance of these stories is
constitutive of lives and relationships” (27). The narratives that structure a culture, a community, beliefs, and individuals are the
sources of values and of meaning. Values determine how a person interprets events, which in turn produces the meaning. When
narratives and beliefs become discontinuous, they lose the power to provide coherent structure and meaning in social and individual
lives. Fragmentation occurs when these narratives become fractured or disregarded, for example through divorces, violence, ill health,
betrayal (both personal and national) or rapid social change.
Clinical examples of fractured personal narratives are common. A client with whom I have been working for two years said
to me, “This is not me, a single parent, divorced, signing up for a dating service; I don’t know who this is.” A client who had been
married for twenty years is told that her spouse has been sexually abusing children and having affairs with persons of the same sex.
The meaning of her story is lost. A mother said to me “I never dreamed I would have to deal with this,” after she had learned a
neighbor had sexually abused her child. After several months of counseling, an abused eleven-year-old separated from her mother
blurts out, “I don’t understand my life, I don’t understand what has happened to me.” The fracturing of the narratives that had
provided meaning, direction, social and personal cohesion, and a sense of purpose results in identity crises for individuals, the church,
and society.
Two contemporary thinkers whose writings shed much light on the phenomena fractured narratives, postmodern
fragmentation, and identity crisis are Charles Gerkin, a social psychologist, and Walter Brueggemann, an Old Testament scholar. Both
Gerkin and Brueggemann alert us to the effects of our present cultural situation: a general social and individual malaise, psychic
numbing, apathy, forgetfulness, despair, lack of faith and trust, and living under conditions which influence persons away from gospel
values. They call our attention to the necessity of the imagination as an integral aspect of the church’s response in providing pastoral
care and speaking prophetically in this context (Brueggemann 1993 and Gerkin 1991). The issue for the church is how to nurture the
failed imagination back to health. In order to gain a perspective on our present cultural context, I explore the works of Gerkin and
Brueggemann and of D. W. Winnicott, a psychoanalyst who articulated a model of the development of the healthy imagination based
on the mother/infant relationship.
Gerkin stresses the need for a deep internal continuity of the Christian narrative within individuals and the community in
order for Christian values to be the norm for community formation. This deep continuity forms in the imagination, and is necessary
for Christian transformation and growth. In a pluralistic society, this deep continuity encounters many narratives that conflict and
compete for our loyalties disrupting deep internal continuity. Western society today is one of cultural pluralism, with many centers of
value that are contained, sustained, and perpetuated by a variety of narratives. Gerkin has pointed out that the social and individual
response to this movement from continuity to discontinuity is a “pervasive malaise . . . [a] distress that infects our culture, I call it a
loss or fragmentation of a consensual structure of meaning and value that can give order and purpose to people’s lives” (1997: 110).
Gerkin says the narrative of community, which was a source of continuity historically, is being displaced and our society “is
increasingly influenced by pluralism of values, norms and visions of the good life,” which are not compatible with values of the
gospel (1991: 13). One such image of the good life is created by multinational corporations through mass production and
consumerism, advanced by the advertising industry and mass media, which forms the image of the ideal consumer, who lives the
“good life.” Such images not only manipulate persons’ imaginations by connecting libidinal drives to advertising images, but also
communicate a value system that supports the multinational corporations, structured upon values other than those from the gospel,
and moves individuals away from a creative and active imagination.
Brueggemann points to the contemporary American context as one in which the church and its members are being
“bombarded by definitions of reality that are fundamentally alien to the gospel” (1986: 92). The bombardment is delivered by mass
media. The shift in American narrative described by both Gerkin and Brueggemann, a shift in which individualism and free choice
become anchored in a pluralistic way of life, has led to fragmentation not only of larger narratives (Gerkin, 1991: 15), but also of the
intra-psychic life of the person.
We can gain a better understanding of this intrapsychic fragmentation through the work of sociologist Jai Poong Ryu. Ryu
suggests that the inner person is made up of the “I” and the “me.” The “I” is that part of the self that “exercises spontaneity, and
aliveness as an existential given” (126). The “I” “desires to be treated as a whole, and to experience new experiences” (27). The “Me”
“is a set of other’s attitudes that one assumes for oneself” through the process of socialization (124). That which was once external
(the “Me”) is now within one’s consciousness and is in a dialogical relationship with the “I.” In our present cultural context there is a
proliferation of the “Me’s.” The “I” becomes overwhelmed as the proliferations “typically result in role conflicts [and] impose
deprivation of spontaneity, aliveness, and creativity in the (I)” (130). Ryu is describing the failure of the imagination, as the “I”
becomes overwhelmed with images from the outside world. Individuals become isolated and experience a sense of loneliness as they
experience the “erosion of normative structures in mass society, powerlessness in the face of massive and complex systems, and
inability to project the future in increasingly unpredictable times” (118). The overwhelming of the “I” by the proliferation of the
“me’s” affects the western church’s ability to discover its identity in the postmodern world and consequently leads to an inability to
implement the gospel. It will be helpful now to look at the evolution of this context in which the church finds itself.
Beginning in the Enlightenment, the western church aligned itself with the method of interpreting reality called modernity,
based on a logic that is “exceedingly thin and one-dimensional, giving credence to the thought and judgement of ‘clear thinkers’ who
fenced out all emotion, who claimed they were objective and free of every vested interest, and who therefore became the voices of
‘the given’”(Brueggemann, 1997: 2). The “given” is reality, a reality defined by objective, emotionless, clear-thinking men. This logic
gave preference to universal truths over and against local perspectives. There was one set of truths for all, and the voices proclaiming
those truths were/are comprising western culture, including the western church. A faith tradition founded on an act of sacrificing love,
creativity, relationship, passion, and suffering aligned itself with a philosophical school of thought which “fenced out all emotion.”
The alliance between the western church and modernity, which has given meaning and dominated western culture since the beginning
of the seventeenth century, is now breaking up as a result of “an amazing pluralism . . . vigorous competing religious claims and a
profound secularization of culture” (1997: 709). This is therefore an important moment in time for the church to be actively defining
itself, which requires the work of the imagination. Because of the effects of mass media and narrative fragmentation on the
imagination, the formation of the healthy imagination is crucial for a church praxis.

Imagination
This section explores historical thought and psychological development of the imagination in order to develop a method of
ministry that addresses the failure of the imagination in the postmodern context. The necessary capacities of the imagination for a
maturing Christian faith include remembering, reflecting, meaning making, discerning, the capacity for empathy, and the capacity to
commit to a central source of values. In order to participate in the post-modern context faithfully and with integrity, people of faith
need intentionally to revitalize their imaginative capacities. The stories in the Old Testament that reveal characteristics of the Hebrew
imagination are helpful in developing an intentional praxis moving toward revitalization of these imaginative capacities.
Hebrew imagination highlights; (1) the activity of the Divine Creator, (2) humans relationships to the Divine Creator, and (3)
the innate ethical nature of persons. The human imagination can create dissonance between human will and God’s will. The Hebrew
imagination calls our attention to this tension as well as to individual and corporate aspects of the decision making process which are
often incongruent with the way of God. In the Old Testament, being in the image of God is not lost in the fall. In the biblical text the
spiritual life is concerned with growing into the likeness of God, which highlights the ethical nature of the human capacity to create
and chose. [Richard Kearney (62-78) and Leroy Howe (51-73).]
In the Genesis account of the beginning of history, God’s first action toward humankind was to bless them. This sense of
blessing can be characterized as feeling welcomed, accepted, affirmed, and hopeful. Being blessed has a relationship to the
imagination: it is a way of being in the world, to be still and know the movement and touch of God, which occurs in the imaginative
realm. From this experience, persons live their lives in relation to one another and God. In the beginning of the story about Adam and
Eve, we are also told how the sense of shame and alienation became a part of humanity and how the process of healing and
reconciling occurs. God called them out of their shame and aloneness. After the woman and the man ate of the tree of knowledge of
good and evil, they heard God walking in the cool of the day, and they hid. They became fearful and ashamed. God covered their
shame and there was reconciliation, but the experience of being separated from God, the knowledge of shame, became a part of the
meaning of being human. Humankind exists in this tension between blessing (the sense of being welcomed) and shame (fearfully
hiding).
The decision to do other than God’s desire, which is an act of creativity, resulted in a sense of shame and a disruption in the
relationality of creation. The place where God’s spirit moves and is received within humans froze; the imagination became rigid and
non-receptive. The first humans hid at the recognition of their exposure, the awareness that God would see them while they were
experiencing shame. This is a problem for humans. It is difficult to bring our sense of loneliness and shame into the healing presence
of others and God. The act of reconciliation, responding to God’s calling and coming out of hiding, is a reconnecting, a re-bonding of
the relationship. This re-bonding process is an act of the imagination, because it requires future images other than those of the present
state of shame. Those images need to be created and infused with trustful anticipation. God’s movement toward reconciliation is part
of the creation process, as is the movement of the imagination in humans. When there is no response to God’s movement, it is a sign
that the imagination is rigid and the capacity for knowing another diminishes, which reduces the possibility for reconciliation. When
there is movement toward reconciliation a sense of hope and trust is restored and strengthened through the process of reflection and
ethical meaning making.
The exercise and development of the reflective imagination are the cornerstones of a faith community that remembers God’s
activity in history and knows that God’s guidance will come in the future as needed. Hope and trust are nurtured in the Hebrew
community because stories of faith are told, sparking the imagination. As Brueggemann puts it, “Story in Israel was intended for the
practice of imagination” (1982: 24). The life of the Hebrew community, characterized by an active and creative imagination that
explores alternative futures, stands in contrast to the way of life in postmodern North American culture in which conformity is prized
and valued. This creates a moral crisis for our culture, because when persons have the capacity to see different futures, they also have
the responsibility to determine how their decisions will affect others. When persons do not create and process the meaning of present
decisions in terms of the future, they tend to abdicate their social and moral meaning making responsibility.
Humans are moral creatures by virtue of their capacity to make distinctions and decisions pertaining to good and evil, which
includes predicting probable outcomes of those decisions, which is the work of the imagination. From the beginning, human kind has
been capable of good and bad imagining—to eat or not to eat the fruit. By imagining different futures, persons have the potential
either to create images that become the sources of idolatry, to disrupt existing images or to create images that guide and direct the
construction of future possibilities that are non-idolatrous. In fact, spiritual growth requires moving through idolatrous images. In
three stories about the apostle Peter, we can see the emotional reactions when idolatrous images are challenged, and the spiritual
nature of moving through and beyond idolatrous images. Idolatrous images are held rigidly within the imagination, and when the
images are challenged by God and the apostle Paul, Peter acts defensively, which indicates he feels threatened. (1) In Matthew 16:21-
23 Peter cannot receive the image of Christ’s going to Jerusalem to suffer, and Peter rebukes Jesus. (2) In Acts 10:9-16 Peter’s image
of who and what is clean and unclean is challenged. (3) And in Galatians 2:11-14 Peter separates himself from the Gentiles when
“certain people from James came.” In the first case Peter responds in disbelief and anger and attempts to control the future of Jesus to
match his images of the future. In the second case Peter defends himself in an act of disobedience. The Lord showed Peter in a vision
every kind of animal and said, “kill and eat” and Peter said, “Certainly not, I have never eaten anything profane or unclean.” In the
third case Peter responds out of fear and anxiety and returns to behavior contrary to his understanding of the vision in case two.
Peter’s emotional responses were anger, disbelief, control, defensiveness, disobedience, fear, and anxiety. These three illustrations
indicate that moving through idolatrous images is part of spiritual growth. Looking at the emotional connection and responses to
images highlights the relationship of the imagination, images and emotions. When the imagination is flexible and healthy, we have
the capacity to see new possibilities and move through the emotionally painful process of letting go of idolatrous images.

Postmodern Imagination: Today’s Context

Postmodern thinkers argue that the imagination is its own creator and definer of human reality, and claim that persons exist
in a world in which legitimizing powers create and propagate meaning. In other words meaning is created out of nothing and designed
to serve the self interest of its creators. This has led to the claim that the imagination is not at all creative (Kearney: 252). Indeed, if
the imagination is not creative, it only contains images internalized from the outer world. This outer world is one that is characterized
by the mass production of images in a consumer culture. Richard Appignanesi, editor of a series of books on the development of
Postmodernism, says, “This is image consumerism. The reproduced is taking the place of reality or replacing it as hyper-reality . . . in
which images breed incestuously with each other without reference to reality or meaning” (49-55). The images of consumerism
become dominant in persons’ imaginations and influence their moral and ethical decision making process.
In writing about the effects of mass consumption in our culture, historian Christopher Lasch provides perspective on the
imagination’s occupation by superficial images. He says that mass advertisement is dominated by images of the “good life,”
“conceived as an endless novelty, change, and excitement, as the titillation of the senses by every available stimulant, as unlimited
possibilities,” and this propaganda (images of the good life) peddles the ethics of consumerism, manifested in a way of life based on
the “model of possession” (520). According to Lasch, a society infused and constructed with the values and beliefs of consumerism is
like an addict. The citizens of this society need an ever incoming supply of the “drug” (images), a need that becomes more intense and
more frequent, in order to avoid what all addictions help avoid—the woundedness and spiritual ills underneath, i.e., Gerkin’s social
malaise. We are conditioned to feel excitement anticipating new images when the news is full of high profile criminal trials,
presidential scandals, and school shootings, and to miss the excitement when calm ensues.
Our social interaction is thick with mass media images as family and relational worlds become very thin. Historically, our
children received values from the families and communities that loved them, cared for them, and watched over them. Now many of
the values our youth are internalizing are from entities/images that are incapable of love or deep knowledge of who they are. When
the child is created in the image of the image, her or his uniqueness goes into hiding. When this occurs, it interrupts the continuity of
pleasant and caring emotional connection and rageful expressions often result. As we will see, the above has profound implications
for the formation and development of the imagination. In order to explore the psychological and spiritual development of the
imagination, I turn to the work of D.W. Winnicott because he develops “one of the most complete contemporary psychological
examinations of imagination” (Wenderoth: 570).

D. W. Winnicott
Winnicott was a pediatrician for a number of years before he became a psychoanalyst, and for the most part, his practice was
in child psychiatry. The study of the psychodynamics of children and their families was his primary focus. While Winnicott was
presenting a seminar, the thought came to him: “there's no such thing as a baby. . . . if you show me a baby you certainly show me also
someone caring for the baby” (Abram: 3). The baby from this perspective is defined as relationship and never as an entity in and of
itself. From that time forward Winnicott focused on the relationship between the mother and the infant in order to understand the
emotional development of the child. His work with mothers and babies led to his discovery of what he called the “potential space,”
the world between mother and baby. This space is of importance to the creative and spiritual life of the infant, child, and adult.
Because of what Ryu calls the proliferation of the “me’s,” Brueggemann’s bombardment, and Gerkin’s social malaise, I believe the
“potential space” is in jeopardy in the postmodern culture.
When a mother takes care of a child, a fusion between mother and child occurs. Eventually this state of oneness begins to
open up and the infant looks around the environment and starts to take in other images. This begins the creation of the potential space
between the mother and infant, which will not occur unless the state of oneness is gradually opened up and the mother introduces “the
real world in small doses” (Winnicott 1964: 69). The purpose of introducing the real world in small doses is to nurture the
development of the potential space. Winnicott warns of the effect if this is done poorly. “The real world has much to offer, as long as
its acceptance does not mean a loss of the reality of the personal imaginative or inner world” (1964: 71). This observation implies that
you can lose the personal imaginative world. Describing the beginning of this process, Winnicott said, “For the lucky infant the world
starts behaving in such a way that it joins up with his imagination, and so the world is woven into the texture of the imagination, and
the inner life of the baby is enriched with what is perceived in the external world” (1964: 74). His concept of enrichment points to the
individual’s capacity to play with, use, and elaborate on the images of the world woven into the texture of the imagination. The
enrichment is a result of environmental reliability and continuity of care. In a culture marked by the failure of the imagination,
persons do not playfully use and elaborate on the images of the world, but hold rigidly onto those images, allowing the world’s
meaning of those images to become the persons’ meaning.
The reliability of the early relationship that nurtures the sense of well being and the development of the potential space
results in the infant’s sense of confidence. This occurs when the infant has sufficiently practiced creating and re-creating an
internalized image, so that when the mother begins to “fail” (to be absent for a time), transitional objects/images from the past which
are held in the infant’s imagination can bridge time until the mother returns. It is here that the imagination becomes the place of
holding and using images and symbols and symbol elaboration occurs. This is the foundation for what Winnicott calls the true self.
The potential space that is nurtured by the mother’s introduction of the world in small doses is also the space where religious
symbols are used and elaborated to allow persons to have a transforming relationship with their faith tradition and community of faith;
it is where the movement of the Holy Spirit is sensed and creation occurs. An understanding of the development and nurturing of this
human capacity is crucial for the church in this time. It will be helpful to look at how the capacity of the imagination is nurtured to
healthy functioning (Winnicott’s true self) and is hindered from developing (Winnicott’s false self).

The Development of the Healthy Self and The Imagination

Winnicott describes three stages of emotional development: absolute dependence, relative dependence, and movement
toward independence. At the stage of absolute dependence the foundation of the imagination is forming. For Winnicott the healthy
imagination develops when the infant experiences “good enough” holding and care.
During the stage of relative dependence the mother begins to ‘gradually fail’ in her adaptation to the baby’s needs. Winnicott
describes two types of babies in relation to this failing: (1) “Babies who have been significantly let down” who carry “with them the
experience of unthinkable or archaic anxiety” (1969: 259-260). Their personalities become built around defenses against agony and a
sense of aloneness. This type lives with diminished capacity of imagination (2). Babies who have “not been significantly let down,”
have a sense of reliability and confidence in the environment, which leads to a personal sense of confidence. In this type, the mother’s
failing creates potential space which contains the activity the imagination (Abram: 79). In the healthy child, holding objects in the
potential space enables the baby to contain and soothe tension and anxiety. This process matures into what Winnicott calls “play.”
This capacity to play also strengthens the true self, Ryu’s “I”, which protects the self from the bombardment of images and from
proliferation of the “Me’s.”
In playing, the infant, child, or adult bridges the inner world and the external world. Playing enables the child to move
through “relative dependence” to “toward independence.” Playing well is a mark of trust and confidence between the baby and the
environment. Play is the foundation for creative living and the discovery of the self, characterized by pleasure (Winnicott, 1989: 59-
63). Winnicott points out the connection between play, the imagination, and health. “The ‘employment of a rich imagination whilst
playing’ means that the child is making use of the third area [i.e., potential space], which is a sign of health” (Abram: 221). Creativity,
an outcome of this health, occurs within the potential space via the activity of the imagination. Play is creativity and creation is play.
When the potential space’s capacity is diminished, the person’s health, development, spiritual life, and cultural and community
participation suffer.
For Winnicott, the mothers who cannot ‘fail,’ i.e., cannot allow the child’s independent development, prevent the infant’s
developing the capacity to use the potential space. When this occurs the infant will respond by organizing a false self, which is created
to protect the core true self. The development of the false self is a response to an environment that does not provide a sense of
continuity of care for the infant. This begins a life that is characterized by anxiety, depression, lack of trust and hopelessness. The
foundational characteristics of the false self are compliance (accompanied by despair rather than hope), and a collapsed or diminished
potential space, which hinders the reflective and meaning-making process. What Ryu calls the “me’s,” what Brueggemann calls the
bombardment of images, and what Gerkin calls fractured narratives also contribute to the development and maintenance of the false
self.
So far I have looked at the implications of personal and cultural narrative fragmentation in the postmodern world, which
include internal discontinuity, pervasive social malaise, psychic numbing, apathy, forgetfulness, despair, and a failed imagination. We
have also seen in the Genesis stories characteristics of imagination, which are creativity, the capacity for reflection and making
meaning, the capacity for awareness of a sense of reconciliation and blessing, and the ethical capacity for decision making. From the
Postmodern perspective, there is no self, but only a series of external images internalized, without depth or the capacity to be creative.
From Winnicott’s perspective of the true self/false self, the postmodern view of the human describes the false self. For Winnicott the
imagination is creative, and it uses and creates cultural images and symbols in relationship to self and others. The true self, according
to Winnicott, experiences a sense of continuity through time and comes to an awareness of itself through relationship with another
human being attentive to his/her needs. Comparing the postmodern perspective on fragmentation of the self to Winnicott’s perspective
on the true self demonstrates that postmodern life induces the construction of the false self.

The Church’s Response

The question that the church must face is the same as the one Winnicott asks about the infant’s early environment: Is the
church environment “good enough” to nurture a sense of health in persons, or has the church become compliant to cultural forces? It
is my contention that to a large degree the church has bowed to modern culture and encourages false self-expression from its
members. Therefore, the nurturing of a “potential space” between the church and culture needs to be a focus of the post modern
church.
As I have argued above, North American culture is in transition and has many centers of value, i.e., is pluralistic. Our
capitalist/consumer society results in narrative fragmentation within the self, and alienation from God, self, others, and creation. A
theological response to this situation must move in the direction of unifying persons both intra-psychically and interpersonally. A
positive self- belief system based on biblical teaching is a way to confront fragmentation and bring spiritual healing to persons
experiencing alienation from God, self, others, and creation. The adoption of a biblical anthropology that identifies persons as blessed,
known, good, and loved at the core of their being moves toward internal and interpersonal unity. These four characteristics describe
the image of God (Winnicott’s true self), and when persons integrate these characteristics into their self- beliefs, they mature into the
likeness of God. If persons can claim the sense of being blessed, known, good, and loved as the scripture describes, the need for a
false self will diminish and continuity of self will develop. This will result in a healed self capable of developing I-thou relationships
with others and God.

Being Blessed, Known, Good, and Loved

Just as we turned to the Genesis account of the fall to describe the human condition above, so also we find in Genesis 1 the
seeds of the conviction that humankind is blessed, known, good, and loved. During creation the movement of God’s spirit is like the
mother who is “good enough” that provides a gentle and unifying presence; this is also the model provided to the church for its day to
day activities.
The blessing and sense of goodness that moves with God into creation results in a certain response: a mutual relationship,
one that is characterized by movement and a developing sense of being blessed and good. This relational response is similar to what
Winnicott describes as the quality of environmental reliability that results in the infant’s developing a way of being in the world that
can be described as hopeful and trusting. This relationship becomes the foundation for humankind in relating to others and creation.
When this is disrupted, persons relate to one another as less than human, without awareness of themselves or others being blessed,
known, good, and loved. They begin a process of objectification, seeing self, others, and creation as objects to be used. Under these
conditions relationships can never enter into the knowledge of another self. The result is an I-it relationship, which means relating to a
person as if he or she were a thing among other things.
As a person becomes attached to things and objectifies him/herself, a sense of despair will grow because he or she will link
identity to something outside of him/herself. This is an indication that the potential space has collapsed and that, consequently, the
individual cannot use images and symbols to make meaning of the events of life. Meaning must be provided by an outside source. The
provision of meaning by an external source is what the apostle Paul is guarding against in Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this
world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” The conformity that Paul refers to in this verse resembles the compliance
described by Winnicott and Brueggemann. Paul offers the hope that it is possible to be remade to know yourself and others as blessed,
known, good, and loved.

Blessed
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female, he created them. God blessed them.
Genesis 1:27-28a.1
The first action of God toward humankind after creation was to bless them. The Hebrew word for blessing, Barak (9 ), is
more than the notion of being blessed with goods or good fortune; being blessed concerns what it means to be human, and is a way of
being in the world as God intended. That which God created is infused with this sense of blessing, constituting a state of hopefulness
as a way of being. This quality of hopefulness, critical for the capacity to conceptualize possibilities and command the personal
agency to bring these into being, is directly related to the sense of being blessed. The inability to imagine alternative futures and
actualize imaginative structures reveals a separation from the sense of blessing and living without hope that life can be different. For
pastoral theologian Andrew Lester hope is theologically based on a “trusting anticipation of the future” because of God’s
dependability (62). In order for hope to evolve, the environments in which the child was reared and the adult participates need to be
“good enough.” The specific characteristics of the “good enough” environment are: (1) dependability and (2) reliability. The maturing
sense of being blessed is thus a result of the environment being dependable and reliable.
The sense of being blessed needs to be an outcome not only of childhood but also of the church experience. The church can
provide an environment that nurtures this way of being. In order to do so the body of Christ, the church members, must strive to relate
to one another with the characteristics of caring dependability and reliability. This is not merely a structural or program issue, but also
an interpersonal issue. In a very real sense, the church needs to be the “good enough” mother. It must endeavor to discover the
spiritual illnesses of our time in general, as well as provide ways of healing the woundedness of individuals as well as its own
woundedness, rather than focusing on how persons can meet the needs of the church. When the latter is the case, the distinction
between church and culture is broken down, and persons who are spiritually and psychologically ill constitute the leadership of the
church. I believe Brueggemann’s perspective on false selves and the church is helpful. He identifies the possibility of “false selves”
resulting from the inability to offer “complaint” to Yahweh. He labels this “The forfeiture of counter-testimony about Yahweh,” and
argues that this forfeiture “is precisely what has produced ‘false selves,’ both in an excessively pietistic church that champions
deference and in excessively moralistic, brutalizing society that prizes conformity and the stifling of rage” (1997: 475-476).
Brueggemann is describing the spiritual illness of our time: the rejection of the true self and an embracing of the false self.
We live between the blessing (the welcoming of the true self) and the curse (the rejection of the true self). This living in-
between, lacking the sense of being blessed and welcomed, is anchored in a sense of shame and is the origin of the false self. The
story of Adam and Eve gives us a picture of living in between the blessing and the curse. Here are two humans, blessed and welcomed
into a loving relationship with God, yet we see them hiding and feeling ashamed because they know they are naked, and fearful of the
exposure of their deed. This is a metaphor of the human capacity to be in a loving relationship and fail in that relationship. Often
humans are poor lovers and poor caregivers to the ones they love, yet the human tendency is to deny this truth and hide it in shame
within ourselves. When this occurs, the sense of being welcomed by others and ourselves is lost. It is possible to mature to be better
lovers and caregivers of one another. This maturation, however, requires intentionality concerning our psychological and spiritual life.
When this occurs communities and individual relationships can be sources of nurturing the sense of being blessed in ourselves and
others.

Known
O Lord, you have searched me and known me. (Psalm 139) Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I
consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations. (Jeremiah 1:5)
Developing the capacity to believe in and to have faith in something is directly dependent on and affected by the attunement
of people in the environment to know and meet the needs of the child. Here again, Winnicott’s work on the mother/infant relationship
provides a helpful parallel to the Christian community’s relationship to its members, corporately and individually. The mother needs
to sense the infant’s needs; she must know the infant. “The thing that ultimately builds up a sense of predictability in the baby is
described in terms of the mother's adaptations to the baby’s needs” (1987: 84). The infant, in “being done to,” experiences either
reliability or unreliability of the environment. When the environment is not “good enough” and the impingements (inappropriate
intrusions or absences in the infant’s or child’s life) are overwhelming, the capacity to have “belief in reliability” and a sense of
confidence will not develop, leading the person to struggle with a sense of being inadequate and not able to tolerate the ambiguity that
persons are both good and bad. The result is all-or-nothing thinking concerning others and self, which can lead to internal negative
self-judgement. When the infant/child is cared for in a reliable way, the capacity to have “belief in reliability” develops. (1965: 93-
105) This capacity to have “belief in reliability” is central to a sense of confidence and spirituality. The confidence is what enables
persons to address God, whether it is in an act of protest, or prayer, or communion revealing a trusting and hopeful imagination.
A relationship similar to this needs to occur in the church. The Christian community’s affirming response to each attempt by
new and maturing members of the church to stretch, to try new means of self-expression, to explore ideas and practice new behaviors
and thoughts, is crucial. In other words, how a person is received into the Christian community, and how the person attempts to attach
to that community, determines how that person will live out his or her life in that community. The community can be a place of
healing or not.
In congregational life, as in the relationship between mother and infant, being known and cared for because of who one truly
is nurtures both empathy and the capacity of the imagination. When the process of being cared for is “repeatedly interrupted” (1987:
62-64) by a failure of the mother’s adaptation to the infant, or the congregation’s to the church member, the thread of continuity
becomes fragmented. The development of empathy and the capacity of the imagination will be arrested, and a sense of insecurity and
proneness to anxiety/depression will result. The same result occurs when a faith community fails to respond to a member in an
adaptive way. If the community expects conformity of members, then there is no time of being, no time to become known and get to
know other community members. How many times have we heard the news of a divorce, addiction, spouse abuse, or a church family
in financial trouble and responded, “I had no idea.” The Christian community needs to mimic the “good enough” mother (by knowing
and adapting to the needs of its members) for the creativity and spontaneity of the birthing relationship between God and the
redeemed to have time to become foundational to the person’s new being. When this does occur the maturing process will include the
development of spiritual gifts appropriate for that church community at that time.
The characteristics that apply to the potential space between the mother and infant also apply to the church community in
relation to culture. It is important to recognize that there is a “potential space” between the church community and the culture. Each
new generation needs creative responses from the church to answer its generational issues. The church has to respond to the ever-
changing world so the gospel can be heard in new and fresh ways, otherwise, the collective imagination of the community will
demand conformity of its participants. This prohibits true participation and collapses the potential space between church and culture.
When this space is collapsed, confusion of identity, meaning, and purpose is the outcome. Then the church complies with cultural
values and norms.
The development of the potential space requires empathy on the part of the community, just as it does in the mother’s
relationship to the newborn. We can see glimpses of this when Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not stop them; for
it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the
kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14, 18:3). The implication is that the child is spontaneously moving toward Jesus out of a sense of
confidence, hope, and trust. The child comes to Jesus to be known and to know, and I believe that it is through the experience of being
known by God that we come to realize we are also loved by God. This realization becomes a new foundation for how we understand
ourselves, others, and creation. This new way of knowing matures as Christ is taken in, internalized, by the redeemed. The
internalization of Christ is a process which involves both cognitive and affective dimensions and in which persons internalize the
gospel story and graft the gospel experience into their imaginations.

Good
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. Genesis 1:31
The sense of being good was birthed when God blessed humankind and saw that creation was good. This is the story of
God's action and the human response to God's activity. Often “good” becomes connected with self confidence that is dependent upon
being compliant. This is not what I am referring to when I use the term “good,” nor is this the type of self-confidence that results from
God's activity in calling creation “good.” Rather, the sense of being good is anchored in a caring relational matrix. The self-
confidence that develops from this is based in the continuity and sameness of identity over time and the capacity to “believe in
reliability.” Pastoral theologian John Patton calls our attention to the theological dimensions of continuity through time when he states
his theological convictions, “God created human beings for relationship with God and with one another. God continues in relationship
with creation by hearing us, remembering us, and bringing us into relationship with one another.” (6). Patton identifies essential
elements of continuity in creation, being remembered, remembering, and being in relationship. This sense of “good” exists because I
am remembered by God; I am held in the memory of God in a loving and caring way. “Good,” in other words, describes the essential
quality of both creation and creature prior to any human activity—i.e., it designates who we are as true selves, not first of all what we
do to comply with the world around us. Otherwise the tendency toward compliance moves us in the direction of living as a false self,
conforming to the patterns of this world. The contrast to this is living with a sense of continuity over time, which includes one’s
personal, transgenerational, and faith-tradition history. When my sense of confidence is based in my sense of self, and I am able to
perceive the context in which I exist and choose among many possibilities of responses and initiatives, then I am living with a greater
sense of freedom. When this is the case, the true self is able to find expression and grows into the likeness of God.
Psychoanalytical theorist Christopher Bollas, building on Winnicott’s work about the true self and potential space, calls this
process the elaboration of the true self (9). The true self is only potential, and is dependent on a relationship of care in order to be
actualized. The dynamic of the relationship between shame and negative self -beliefs hinders the expression of one’s potential
personality and spirituality. When a poor response to the infant or the church member occurs, the potential space does not evolve. In
contrast, when the other is valued the innate sense of good is actualized and the qualities of confidence and the capacity to trust
evolve.

Loved
“We love because he first loved us.” I John 4:19
Love is the force that unifies the human spirit. Theologian Paul Tillich defines love “as the unifying power of life that brings
about the unity of the separated” (Campbell: 666). This sense of love unifies communities and relationships and heals persons’
internal fragmentation. We can also see this unifying sense of love in Winnicott’s works. From Winnicott’s work our attention is
drawn to the relationship between the acts of love, integration, and differentiation.
The process of integration and differentiation between persons is crucial to spiritual health. A high level of differentiation is
characterized by the capacity to think, reflect, and make meaning of external as well as internal stimuli. This process enables persons
to delay gratification, check impulses, and interpret context, all of which are foundational for moral meaning making, ethics, and
intentional choosing of value systems. Unifying, or integration, occurs prior to differentiation. Differentiation, the completion of the
integration/differentiation process, is dependent on the mother’s or the community’s sharing its ego strength so the infant or the newly
redeemed can later differentiate and set boundaries in order to claim distinction as a participant in the ongoing life of the community.
This movement toward greater independence or differentiation begins in a holding place. “Holding includes especially the physical
holding of the infant, which is a form of loving” (1965: 49). The Christian community in this sense must also be a holding place for
its members, a community of gentle movement and growth.
The community can nurture new growth and facilitate spiritual maturation. It can also provide a place of healing and
maturation for those whose early environments were lacking the “good enough mother” quality. The Christian community unified by
love can provide care that results in internal integration and reconciliation, intra- and inter-personally. As Winnicott points out, this
form of love facilitates integration and gives permission for differentiation. The concept of love as a unifying force, and the
community as a holding place, a place to potentialize possibilities, heal, and be creative, caring, and spontaneous, is central to
Christian spiritual formation. To know that we are loved by God is to know that we are lovable in spite of what we know about
ourselves. To sense that we are lovable means we have the capacity to love in a like manner.

Conclusion
As stated at the beginning of the paper a ministry practice in light of the foregoing encourages reflection and the use of the
imagination, interprets history critically, and facilitates cognitive and emotional, personal, and transgenerational continuity. Below are
statements by the group participants about their experience in the group which indicate a greater capacity for reflection and
interpretation than prior to their group experience.
Participant 1. After attending the group awhile I knew that I liked to come rather than having to come. I felt
welcomed emotionally as well as challenged mentally to see things in a different point of view, which helped me not to take it
personally and separate their personal problems from mine.
 Participant 2. In the group I decided to better understand myself. I became aware that events from my childhood have had an
effect on me and how I relate to others. I believe that communication, understanding, and sensitivity has increased and this has
resulted in a more trusting relationship with my self and my wife. My relationships on the whole are better. I find myself more
comfortable around the church and more interested in what I hear around the church. I think what I've taken out of the group is a
sensitive approach to others. I've been able to apply, at times, in my work environment and in gatherings concepts such as blessed,
known, good, and loved, and ideas such as family of origin, helping to understand people and listen better.
Participant 3. Through therapy, and now the group, I understand the importance of being able to talk about the “negatives” in
family, in order to find the origin of negative self beliefs. Now, my thinking is that, maybe (just maybe) they are beliefs and not truths.
By going to the group each week, I make myself available to be cared for and to care for others. In time I’ll be able to feel the care of
others and hope. The map of family of origin has been helpful, because it has helped me to see that I am more than my abuse. I now
understand the influence that many people and relationships had on my formative years.
Participant 4. Being aware of negative self beliefs vs. beliefs of blessed, known, etc. and the ability to stop, start and rethink
gives me hope and a chance to change when I take the time. The group helped in awareness of resources and using them is my
responsibility.

The goal of the group was to provide a setting in which each person could explore his or her history, how that history is
presently influencing relationships to others, God and the church community, and what meaning that might have for the future. The
group’s work involved reflecting on one’s history, while being aware that one is blessed, known, good, and loved, in order to integrate
a sense of healing where historical woundedness exists. Learning to discuss the dynamics of the formations of negative self-beliefs
and the imaginative formation that maintains those beliefs has proven to be both painful and healing.
Members of the group exhibit an increase in trust and hope, and in positive change in their psychological and spiritual lives. I
believe this is the result of exercising the imagination in terms of reflection, meaning making, and understanding how history impacts
the present and the future. As demonstrated in the above quotes, participants experienced an increase in differentiation and
communication, and reduced emotional reactivity. The group process demonstrated that the method of contrasting positive self beliefs
from scripture and negative self beliefs internalized from childhood as defenses in a safe, caring and reflective group over time
resulted in greater spiritual and psychological health.

NOTES
1. All scriptural citations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1990 by Graded Press.
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