In the initial post in this series I said that many popular Christian authors, particularly those who write on the subject of marriage, presuppose a view of personality and motivation bearing a strong resemblance to that of Abraham Maslow's. I also claimed that Maslow's thinking has so saturated American culture that it often serves as the silent and invisible framework through which we read the Bible and understand ourselves as Christians. Instead of helping believers cultivate sorely needed discernment by critically assessing Maslow's philosophy of life from the perspective of a biblical worldview, many Christian authors assume his diagnosis of what ails us and then force Scripture to conform to it. The gospel, if it is mentioned at all, is then offered as the solution to a problem that someone other than Jesus has defined while the problem that from God's perspective is most critical is viewed as being of little practical value to the issues with which we struggle.
In this and following posts I wish to illustrate the phenomenon, citing examples from popular Christian books on marriage. Before I proceed, however, I want to plainly state that my criticisms are not intended in any way to call into question the faith of any of the authors I'll mention. I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of their commitment to Christ or to the institution of marriage. I think all of them are devoted to doing all they can to aid couples in strengthening and protecting their marriages and for this I am grateful. Unquestionably, zeal for marriage is a good thing. Zeal not tempered with biblical truth, is not.
Traces of Abraham's seed can be detected in a book recently recommended to me - For Women Only: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men by Shaunti Feldhahn. As the title indicates, the book is intended to help women better understand the men in their lives. But this is not an end in itself but a means to a greater end. Feldhahn tells her readers, "The more we understand the men in our lives, the better we can support and love them in the way they need to be loved. In other words, this revelation is supposed to change and improve us" (emphasis in the original, p. 20). The book is based on the results of a survey of hundreds of men who were asked about their desires, fears, aspirations, dislikes, etc. I've heard from a few women that it has been an eye-opener for them and from my own reading I can understand why. On more than a few pages, I recognized myself in the descriptions of men's inner lives. Despite the following criticism, I think this small volume has much merit and can be instrumental in fostering greater understanding.
The reservation I have about the book, however, is that the author concludes from the fact that many men deeply desire the respect of their wives that this desire constitutes a need; a need that if unfulfilled, results in undesirable behavior. According to Feldhahn, "A man deeply needs the woman in his life to respect his knowledge, opinions, and decisions - what I would call his judgment" (p. 29). This male "need" for respect and affirmation is "so hardwired and so critical that most men would rather feel unloved than disrespected or inadequate" (p. 22). From her use of the word "hardwired" I take Feldhahn to mean that this need is a given of creation in which case we cannot but conclude that it is good.
As far as I can tell, Feldhahn nowhere considers the possibility that the desire to be esteemed may at times be so domineering that it is perceived as a need when in actuality it is better described by the biblical concept of lust or ruling desire. Is it not possible to want a good thing so much such that I experience frustration, discomfort, and anger if I can't have it? It shouldn't take much reflection on any of our parts to think of a time when that was so for us. Another question. Does the fact that I act badly when I don't get what I want prove beyond question that I need what I long for? Amnon, desirous of his beautiful half-sister, Tamar, "was so tormented that he made himself ill" (2 Samuel 13:2). But would anyone conclude from his adverse reaction that his craving for Tamar constituted an actual need?
The answer to that question is obvious, of course. Amnon was driven by sexual lust, something clearly proscribed by Scripture. But what of good desires -- wanting my wife to respect me? Is it really possible to lust after something with which God is pleased? I don't know of a better treatment of the New Testament concept of lust than that offered by David Powlison in a book titled The Coming Evangelical Crisis: Current Challenges to the Authority of Scripture and the Gospel (Moody, 1996). In a chapter called "How Shall We Cure Troubled Souls?" Powlison states that we have drastically thinned the New Testament's thick teaching about lust so much so that:
...."lust" has become almost useless to modern readers of the Bible. It is reduced to sexual desire. Take a poll of the people in your church, asking them the meaning of "lusts of the flesh." You will find that sex appears on every list. Greed, pride, or gluttonous craving might appear in the answers of a few of the more thoughtful believers. The marquee sins of the heart appear, but the subtleties and details are washed out. And a crucial biblical term for explaining human life languishes (p. 211).
In response to the question of what makes a desire sinful, Powlison writes: This question becomes particularly perplexing to people when the object of their desire is a good thing. Notice some of the adjectives that get appended to our cravings: evil, polluted lusts (Col. 3:5; 2 Peter 2:10). Sometimes the object of desire itself is evil: e.g., to kill someone, to steal, to control the cocaine trade on the Eastern seaboard. But often the object of desire is good, and the evil lies in the lordship of the desire. Our will replaces God's as that which determines how we live. John Calvin put it this way: "We teach that all human desires are evil, and charge them with sin -- not in that they are natural, but because they are inordinate." In other words, the evil in our desires often lies not in what we want [e.g., respect from my wife] but that we want it too much. Natural affections (for any good thing) become inordinate, ruling cravings. We are meant to be ruled by godly passions and desires. Natural desires for good things are meant to exist subordinate to our desire to please the Giver of gifts. The fact that the evil lies in the ruling status of the desire, not the object, is frequently a turning point in counseling (p. 212).
Isn't it odd that such a prevalent biblical theme as lust or sinful desire plays only a supporting role (if it gets any stage time at all) in some of the most popular Christian books while the concept of emotional needs (which at least at first glance don't seem to be prominent in the Bible) gets top billing? Like other authors on the topic, Feldhahn seeks to ground biblical support for the "women need love and men need respect" model in Ephesians 5:33: "However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband." But this doesn't seem to me to be what the verse, considered in its context, is getting at. I suspect that this commonly held interpretation of the verse is due to our adopting Maslow's hermeneutic for interpreting people.
Next, drawing from Feldhahn and others, I want to discuss the implications of this view for our understanding of the nature and cause of sinful behavior.
Oh, in case anyone's wondering, I haven't overlooked the question someone asked in response to Part 2. It's an important one that I intend to address in a future post. Your patience is greatly appreciated.
In the first in this series of posts I offered a brief sketch of Abraham Maslow's theory of human nature and motivation. Maslow's assumption of the inherent goodness of human nature led him to trace the source of what, from a Christian perspective, would be called evil or sinful behavior, to unsatisfied psychological needs. Evil is, therefore, a response to psychological malnutrition. Quoting again from the second edition of Toward a Psychology of Being:
"Evil" behavior has mostly referred to unwarranted hostility, cruelty, destructiveness, "mean" aggressiveness. This we do not know enough about. To the degree that this quality of hostility is instinctoid, mankind has one kind of future. To the degree that it is reactive (a response to bad treatment), mankind has a very different kind of future. My opinion is that the weight of the evidence so far indicates that indiscriminately destructive hostility is reactive, because uncovering therapy reduces it, and changes its quality into "healthy" self-affirmation, forcefulness, selective hostility, self-defense, righteous indignation, etc.
Contrary to the Bible, which attributes the corruption that is in the world to sinful desire (2 Peter 1:4), Maslow contended that cruelty and inhumanity owe their existence to deficiencies of love, acceptance, security, and respect. According to Maslow, deprivation, not depravity, is humankind's root problem. Stated that way, it's apparent how opposed his anthropology is to that of Scritpure. Nevertheless, as I said in my previous post, a lot of Christian counseling, teaching, and writing bears more than a vague resemblance to the humanist psychologist's model. Today I'll cite one example.
A recent World Magazine article called "The Secret Sin," focused on infidelity among Christian women. The article reported George Ohlschlager, director of policy and public affairs with the Association of Christian Counselors as saying that such affairs stem from numerous issues including marital or childhood emotional deficits and in some cases, a lack of spiritual maturity. According to Ohlschlager, many Christian women, "are not practicing spiritual disciplines, and are not really pursuing an intimacy with Christ that would go a long way toward filling up some of those emotional needs."
Notice the crucial role the concept of deficiency needs plays in this interpretation. Marital infidelity is not primarily the outward expression of powerful, misguided desires or lusts. It is, rather, a response to "emotional deficits." What is most fundamentally responsible for the sinful behavior is an inadequate meeting of psychological requirements. A major problem with this kind of diagnosis is that it is operating with concepts and categories at odds with those of Scripture. Does the Bible ever account for sinful acts in terms of unsatisfied needs? Jesus identifies adultery as one of the various forms of evil that spring from the heart (Mark 7: 21-23) and doesn't even remotely suggest that this is due to some psychic lack. Sexual immorality is a manifestation of the desires of the flesh that war against the desires of the Spirit (Gal. 5:17-21). Maslow pictures the heart as a fragile plant in need of nourishment. I think the Bible pictures my heart more like the insatiable, carnivorous plant in Little Shop of Horrors, demanding that it be fed and growing hungrier with every meal. If I commit adultery, or any other sin, the Bible doesn't lead me to ask what needs have gone or are going unmet. Instead, it shines its probing light upon my heart and asks, "What is it that you love, trust in, hope for, desire, or crave more than your Creator and Redeemer?"
Take note, too, of how when unmet emotional needs take center stage in our thinking about what motivates us, it transforms how we understand the purpose of spiritual disciplines, not to mention how we conceive of Christ's role in our lives. Without question, Jesus' followers should devote themselves to prayer and meditation on the Word in order to know Christ better. But is this really to "fill up" emotional needs? This is, in my estimation, a superimposition of an alien anthropology over the inspired texts. The beautiful, costly antique furniture of Scripture has been rearranged and pushed to the periphery to make room for a modern piece that doesn't match the decor.
Despite the pervasive assumption that destructive behavior is caused by unmet psychological needs, relatively few Christians consider what a need is and how it differs from an overwhelming want or what the Bible calls lust. Unfortunately, not many Christian self-help books raise those questions or help readers answer them. This is especially so with volumes on marriage. That will be the topic of my next post in this series.
In the meantime I urge you to read an in-depth article by Edward T. Welch called "Who Are We?: Needs, Longings, and the Image of God in Man." Welch surveys the history of need-based theory and critiques its adoption by Christian counseling.
Humanist psychologist, Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) was very optimistic about human nature, writing in his Toward a Psychology of Being: "This inner nature, as much as we know of it so far, seems not to be intrinsically or primarily evil." On the contrary, human nature is "good or neutral rather than bad." In the introduction to the same volume, Maslow wrote: Destructiveness, sadism, cruelty, malice, etc., seem so far to be not intrinsic but rather they seem to be violent reactions against frustration of our intrinsic needs, emotions, and capacities." In response to the question of the origin of neuroses, Maslow wrote:
My answer...was, in brief, that neurosis seemed at its core, and in its beginning, to be a deficiency disease: that it was born out of being deprived of certain satisfactions which I called needs in the same sense that water and amino acids and calcium are needs, namely that their absence produces illness. Most neuroses involved, along with other complex determinants, ungratified wishes for safety, for belongingness and identification, for close love relationships and for respect and prestige.
Basic needs, said Maslow, possess the following characteristics:
- The deprived person yearns for their gratification persistently.
- Their deprivation makes the person sicken and wither.
- Gratifying them is therapeutic, curing the deficiency-illness.
- Steady supplies forestall these illnesses.
- Healthy (gratified) people do not demonstrate these deficiencies
Maslow described these "deficits" or "deficiency needs" as: "...empty holes, so to speak, which must be filled up for health's sake, and furthermore, must be filled from without by human beings other than the subject." Elsewhere he says that these psychological needs "may be considered as deficiencies which must be optimally fulfilled by the environment in order to avoid sickness and subjective ill-being." It is as important that psychological needs be met as it is that physiological needs (e.g., the need for salt, calcium, or vitamin D) be satisfied.
Maslow grouped needs into five levels that stood in a hierarchical and developmental relationship to each other. Beginning with the foundational level they are: physiological needs (e.g., food, drink, air, etc.), safety needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs (respect from others and for oneself), and the need for self-actualization (the ability to make the most of one's potential). Maslow proposed that we are most immediately aware of lower level needs but once they are satisfied, upper level needs become more apparent and have greater motivational force.
In that Maslow was seeking to construct a humanistic model of personality and motivation, it's no surprise that the concept of "sin" is absent from his system. Sommers and Satel write in One Nation Under Therapy:
From the beginning, Maslow's aim was to displace moral philosophy and religion with a science of man. Traditional religion, in his judgment, had proved inadequate. He proposed a "religion-surrogate." He said, "Throughout history [humanity] has looked for guiding values, for principles of right and wrong outside of [itself], to a God, to some sort of sacred book, perhaps, or to a ruling class." Maslow believed that he had found the basis for ethics and personal fulfillment in human nature itself.
Behavior and attitudes that are, from a biblical perspective, sinful, are not, according to Maslow, evidence of a morally corrupt nature but of frustrated needs. Assuming Maslow's diagnosis, the appropriate cure is not a new heart with redirected desires but satisfaction of the natural heart's yearnings. Neither the objects nor the intensity of our desires are the cause of the conflicts among us. Nancy Pearcey notes in Total Truth that "Every worldview...offers a counterpart to the Fall, an explanation of the source of evil and suffering. What has gone wrong with the world? Why is there warfare and conflict?" For Maslow, unfulfilled psychological needs are what bar us from Paradise.
This assumption about human motivation is deeply entrenched in the American psyche even among those unfamiliar with Maslow's work. What I find so astonishing (not to mention disturbing) is how influential and pervasive this perspective on human nature and behavior is among Bible-believing Christians. You don't have to search hard for it. It's propagated in sermons and popular Christian books, particularly those having to do with marriage. It's the lens through which we view life and even the grid through which we interpret Scripture.
Maslow was well aware that his motivational model was part of a larger worldview. In the preface to the second edition of Toward a Psychology of Being he described Humanist Psychology as "one facet of a general Weltanschauung, a new philosophy of life, a new conception of man...." Why, then, do Christians so readily accept and even defend this way of thinking about the human condition? Why does so much Christian teaching about why we do the things we do sound more like Abraham Maslow than Jesus, the seed of Abraham, the patriarch? I share the curiosity David Powlison expresses in his essay in Care for the Soul: Exploring the Intersection of Psychology and Theology:
Why does one or another secular theory of human motivation almost inevitably control the Christian counseling theory at the punch line, where counseling engages the details of life as it is lived? In particular, why have "need" theories that define significance, love and self-esteem as the standard needs been so prominent when they are so alien to the gaze of God and the psychological experience of Jesus? Why has the most typical, and apparently the most vital, external contribution of psychology been secular motivation theory, the very thing that wrenches human life out of its true context and drains psychological experience of its essential characteristics? Why do integrationist theories fail to take seriously the specific, omnipresent nature of sin as the chief and most immediate problem in the hearts of those we counsel?
I'll devote future posts to further exploration of the influence of Abraham Maslow on the children of Abraham, including examples of this influence in Christian literature. Go to Part 2
