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Exchanged Glory II: The OK Stronghold
<page 21>Once I looked at it in the light of God’s word, it helped me to understand a struggle that had raged in me for years.
When I was twenty-nine years old, I went through a job change that caused me a great deal of trouble.[14] It brought to the surface many of my weaknesses, and I struggled to make sense of my reactions. Eventually, my inner turmoil led me to change my whole approach to life.
The new job shouldn’t have been that difficult. I had the talent I needed, I was well paid, and those who had moved me to it saw me as a leader who they expected to quickly succeed. No one wanted me to have trouble. Unfortunately, I couldn’t adjust emotionally. The whole situation left me furious and terrified, and I didn’t know why.
I was contradicting much of what I believed as a Christian. The Bible told me to do all things without complaining and disputing (Philippians 2:14). I was supposed to obey with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord (Colossians 3:22). Yet I sat in my office day after day unable to concentrate, wasting hours as I tried to come to grips with seething rage.
In the middle of my brooding, I was tempted to soothe my distress with sex and drugs. Any time life got hard, my desire to medicate myself in these ways grew. These temptations left me feeling worse than I already did. They reminded me of how alone and strange I felt in my battle to escape from the abnormal desires that continued to pull at my heart.
My weirdness was annoying, but my anger over my job was a bigger problem. I tried all sorts of coping mechanisms: I denied my emotions, I brought them into the open, I worked with them, I worked against them…but when all was said and done, my heart was still like a churning volcano.
The best I seemed to be able to do was to let my frustration motivate me to change myself and the world around me. I had been hoping for years that my anger would leave me before it exploded. Instead it had grown into a fury I could no longer contain. It seemed that the only decent option I had left was to ride it like a wild horse, hoping to tame it and put it to good use.
Why was I so mad? The new job used an approach that was fifteen years out of date. My coworkers and I were all so busy with it that we had little time to learn the kinds of skills that would make us valuable if we needed to look for new work. I feared my job would trap me into an unfulfilling and financially insecure career. I had just spent two years on the cutting edge of technology, where the skills I learned had made me valuable to many companies. My new job seemed to have all the promise of prison work.
When my anger didn’t subside, I focused it on finding a way to save myself and my coworkers from the professional damage I thought was ahead of us. It was an ambitious goal, but I was too <page 22>upset to just do my assigned work. At least trying to aid others helped me to feel better about what was happening.
I put in long hours, sometimes devoting more time to trying to figure out a way to change the organization than to doing my assigned work. I usually managed to still be productive, but at one point I began to fall behind. When my manager confronted me, I pointed out that our organization was hurting its workers. I asked him what our out-of-date employees were going to do when they had to find new work. I was working every available minute to try to save them from their coming economic difficulties and didn’t know how to do much else.
I sort of believed my rhetoric, and my manager was gracious, but what I was really doing was grasping for a productive way to survive my inner turmoil. I turned it into a crusade. This helped me to work through the fact that I was too emotionally crippled to just do my real assignments.
Sometimes, my noble goals faded into cynicism. After a year on the job, it was time to hand in a description of what I had done for the past twelve months. I was in a bad mood at the time. After describing my struggle with the organization, I closed with this: “I have always thought it was more important to guard my future than to cover my rear. I think some people in this organization have been covering their rears for so long that they have gotten their heads stuck in them.”
Fortunately, my manager was kind enough to hand my words back to me. He asked me to write something more appropriate when I had calmed down, which I did.
When I first started the job, I was so upset that my stomach developed hiccups for the better part of several days. After a year, more symptoms of stress had shown up. I had sores in my throat, difficulty sleeping, and other indications that I was pushing myself too hard. It was becoming clear that I couldn’t keep going the way I was.
As I looked at my plan to save the organization, I realized that my best efforts probably wouldn’t accomplish much. They would also require years of sacrifice on my part. There wasn’t a good enough reason to risk my health and family, so I decided to give up and head in a new direction.
I asked my management to let me look for another job in the company. Then I tried to fit in while I waited to move. I followed procedures and even started wearing a suit rather than the jeans and casual shirts I had worn for years. My crusade was over, and it was time to see if I could learn to work like others.
I had spent a year sorting through my rage, and much of it had turned into healthy motivation. I found, however, that letting go of my anger brought up an emotion that had been hiding behind it – fear. Sometimes, it bordered on terror, even though I was doing simple tasks like speaking with people, writing designs, and following the rules. I couldn’t figure out where all that emotion was coming from.
While in this struggle, I read the book I’m OK-You’re OK,[15] and it led to a breakthrough. It was a strange place for me to find answers. I believed I’m OK-You’re OK contained many misleading ideas, and I understood why Christians warned against it. Its dangers weren’t lost on me, but I <page 23>found myself reinterpreting it to make it fit with what the Bible taught. While doing so, my heart came up with insights that helped me to recognize sinful thinking habits that had become so much a part of me that I had missed them.
Because many Christians will object to me using ideas from worldly psychology, I need to devote a little space to describing the dangers in doing so. I also want to explain why I believe worldly psychology can contain useful information in spite of the dangers.
Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.
Psychology is often based on man-made philosophy that ignores or distorts the truth of God. If we let it cheat us, it can distract us with empty deceit that keeps us away from the reality of Christ.
An example of where I believe I’m OK-You’re OK contains this kind of error starts with the title of the book. It is hard for me to see how a person who is dead in their sins and headed for hell could be considered OK. I can’t honestly hold to the main attitude the book calls for – to accept everyone without judgment.
Though we should treat others with love and respect, our care isn’t based on the idea that people are OK. It is instead based on the love of the God who reaches out to us even in our “not OKness.” He cares about us even when we are doing great damage and deserve fiery torment.
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
A second major flaw in the philosophy of I’m OK-You’re OK is the idea that human beings don’t need to rely on God’s revelation in the Bible. This ignores the role of the Scriptures.
Your word is truth.
I’m OK-You’re OK doesn’t bring out the fact that, apart from God’s light, our hearts are darkened by the deceptiveness of sin.
This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart. (emphasis added)
Only God’s word can show us the way past our blindness.
<page 24>Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another — showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God's way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.
(2 Timothy 3:16-17, The Message)
If worldly psychology contains these kinds of flaws, why read it at all? I believe it has some value, because psychologists study people. We can all benefit from learning how human beings tend to think, feel, and act. Most of us are blessed if we can figure out what goes on in our own heads, and maybe in the heads of a few close friends. Psychologists look at thousands of individuals and discover patterns that most of us don’t have enough experience to see on our own. They can help us recognize what our hearts are doing.
This is what happened to me when I read I’m OK-You’re OK. Once I looked at it in the light of God’s word, it helped me to understand a struggle that had raged in me for years. Different parts of my personality had been fighting each other, and I hadn’t been able to make sense of the battle. The book helped me to identify what was going on, and then I looked to God for answers.
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