No Freudians

By college training I am a Freudian. But it is interesting to me that God is not. True, He tells us:

"Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves" (2 Corinthians 13:5).

But He does not mean the kind of morbid introspection of every minutia of action supposedly coughed up by childhood determinism and the swirling cauldron of libido. The Lord just wants us to take inventory regularly to see if we are "in the faith"-that is, if we are believing Him. That's something a child can do.

It is good for us to repent of our known sins, and we should when we are conscious that we have sinned. But Paul himself was not morbid in his self-searching:

"But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you, or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me . . ." (1 Corinthians 4:3-5).

The man was too busy praising and preaching and discipling.

I had almost missed something very obvious in Scripture. It everywhere tells us to do things like: "hold fast" (Hebrews 4:14), and "put on love" (Colossians 3:14), and "teach . . . sing . . . thank" (Colossians 3:16)-as if it expects that we are able to do these things fairly well! It does not say, "Oh, you may try all you like, but you will never succeed because it is impossible to have a pure motive!"

Rather, God gives all kinds of commands to live considerately with a spouse, and to visit orphans and widows, etc., and He seems content that we just do them.

Here is the ticket: I find that if we abide in Christ all day long-in the practical ways of keeping His praise and thanks on our lips-we will not have to fret overmuch about our Freudian motives.

Listen to commentaries by Andrée Seu.