I fondly remember one of the interviews I had when I trying to be placed in a pre-doctoral clinical internship. Toward the end of this particular interview, evidently noticing my interests in religion and spirituality on my curriculum vita, someone asked me, “Would you consider yourself a Christian psychologist?” Strangely enough, I had never really seriously considered that question. So, on the spot, I said, “Well, I am a Christian and a psychologist, so, yes, I guess I’m a Christian psychologist.”

The notion of a Christian psychology has been on my mind lately. I wonder whether Christian Psychology might transcend the simple understanding I had a few years ago to become a distinct subspeciality within Psychology, similar to what Christian Philosophy apparently has been able to do. If this is possible, I wonder what would constitute such a subspeciality.

I haven’t rigorously pursued this topic yet, but I hope this will begin an occasional series reflecting on what a Christian psychology might be. Today, I will begin with some preliminary thoughts that I hope to flesh out at some point in the future.

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Ever since I read Kathleen Norris’s book, the Cloister Walk, maybe 10 years ago, I have been fascinated by Christians’ reliance on the Psalms as a means to a deep prayer life. Perhaps this is because the Psalms are so raw in terms of emotion, so striking in terms of insight, and so poetic in terms of imagery. Given this, I have been on a long-time quest of identifying and praying my favorite Psalms. In the last couple of weeks, my interest in this little project has been rekindled in front of my fireplace as I’ve quieted myself after the kids have went to sleep. Below I list my favorites, along with particular sections that most stand out as being most meaningful to me.

“Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the seat of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers (Psalm 1: 1-3).”

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. . . Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me (Psalm 23: 1-4).”

“Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreath; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath. Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it. But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you (Psalm 39:4-7).”

“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God (Psalm 42:1-2).”

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. . . Be still, and know that I am God (Psalm 46:1-3, 10).”

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. . . The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise (Psalm 51: 10, 17).”

“Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain (Psalm 127:1).”

“My heart is not proud, O Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul (Psalm 131:1-2).”

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting (Psalm 139: 23-24).”

I’ve been thinking in recent weeks a lot about intuition, its powers, and its perils. To inform and develop my thoughts, I read David Myers’s book “Intuition,” which I reference frequently below.

Myers defines intuition to be a “capacity for direct knowledge, for immediate insight without observation or reason.” He notes that many people base their beliefs and actions on intuition and recommend similar practices to others. In some ways, this seems helpful. For example, experts often (but not always) seem to be able to quickly and effectively size up a novel situation relevant to their knowledge and experience. Perhaps this is because, as neuroscientist Antonio Damasio suggests, good judgment involves an emotional component often times based on previous experiences. In fact, brain researchers such as Damasio and Joseph LeDoux have found that some of “the brain’s emotional pathways bypass the cortical areas involved in thinking. One pathway runs from the eye via the thalamus, the brain’s sensory switchboard, to the amygdala, a pair of emotional control centers in the brain’s primative core. This eye-to-amygdala shortcut, bypassing the cortex, enables your emotional response before your intellect intervenes.” Finally, intuition seems to be a critical ingredient for creative breakthroughs.

On the other hand, people often times seem to rely on intuition in ways that are misguided. Myers writes a lot about this in his book, detailing how individuals often are inaccurate in their judgments related to the past, future, their competence and virtue, relationships, sports, investments, clinical decisions, interviewer decisions, gambling, and psychic predictions.

My interest in this topic largely stems from my observation that people’s thoughts and actions, in a given situation, often seem to be based more on emotion and intuition than on their more deeply seated beliefs and values. This makes me think of something that renowned educator, Parker Palmer, once said about human development. Palmer believes that people tend to be reactive in life, rather than reflective. Perhaps this is because we revert automatically to the more primitive part of our brains, rather than relying on the more advanced cortex. Palmer suggests that there are three primary institutions that help people transition from reactivity to reflectivity: (1) Education, (2) art, and (3) science. To this, I might add (4) religion.

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In its August/September edition, one of my favorite magazines, Scientific American Mind, published an intriguing article (“Depressingly Easy”) suggesting that a major cause of depression concerns individuals’ lifestyles. The author, Kelly Lambert (also author of the book “Lifting depression: A neuroscientist’s hands-on approach to activating your brain’s healing power,” from which the article is based), suggests that many of our current mental health problems stem from a disconnect between how our brains are designed to receive enjoyment and our current quick-fix, fast-pace lifestyles. Specifically, she suggests that our brains are designed to benefit from “effort-driven rewards” that stimulate a particular part of the brain involved in pleasure. So, whereas in the past, people benefited both from anticipation and satisfaction of the completion of hard work (such as gardening, hunting, making our own clothes, preparing our own food from scratch, and walking or biking to a destination), nowadays we simply buy what we need and use technology to speed processes along. Because of this, we have lost much of the anticipation that comes from the completion of a project as well as the satisfaction that only comes when we are personally responsible for it. This may take much of the enjoyment out of our lives. (Compare this with the Amish, who experience hardly any depression as a community.)

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On the flight out to the conference I’m attending, I had the opportunity to read a lengthy article by Diener and Seligman called “Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being.” It’s a very interesting article essentially making the case that societies across the world rely too heavily on measures of financial growth to index success and base policy decisions. They argue that, in addition to this, we also might do well to consider the more direct outcome of interest, which is well-being or happiness.

Some more specific points the authors make follow:

Although gross national products have risen across the world in the past 50 years, well-being has not followed the same trajectory. “For instance, depression rates have increased 10-fold over the same 50-year period, and rates of anxiety also are rising. . . Indeed, . . . the average American child in the 1980s reported greater anxiety than the average child receiving psychiatric treatment in the 1950s.” In fact, “by age 30, about 65% of the women born in 1950 had had one depressive episode, whereas fewer than 5% of the women in the 1910 cohort had had such an episode by the time they were 30.” In contrast, the Old Order Amish (living in Pennslyvania) have a 5-year prevalence rate of depression of only .5%.

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The older that I get, the more I realize that nothing can be known for certain. Surely, this is true with relatively unobservable phenomena, such as the existence of God, but it’s also true for other matters that seem “proven” as well, such as the benefits of exercise on physical health. When one looks closely at the evidence behind any claim, it is easy to see that everything is a matter of probability or logic. Some things may be more probable, but they are never completely proven. The law of gravity, even, can only be shown to have worked in the past (not the future). Einstein showed that time doesn’t really exist as we all naturally think. And, even my apparent consciousness right now could be a dream.

For some, this realization can be scary. It is difficult to “rest” when one realizes that one’s resting point is, to some extent, uncertain. Still, individuals must make conclusions and have occasional “stopping points” from which to base thought and action. It seems to me that these points best are based on science and reason (with a full appreciation of the limitations of these ways of knowing).

One of my favorite lines of thought concerning this comes from the Christian psychologist David Myers who once wrote the following:

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