Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

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Pantheism teaches that God is all things. But Pantheism has now been combined with Theism (God is a personality) and this produces panentheism, which attempts to retain God’s personality but adds that He also indwells every created thing. Pete was born to an Italian-American immigrant family from Brooklyn, NY. His grandparents, of both his mother and father, were from a small village outside Naples, Italy. Their family owned an Italian bakery before moving to a New Jersey suburb less than two miles from Manhattan. If we are to expect maturity in our Christian lives, it is only going to come through looking outward to the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ. We must therefore be positioning our lives such that we are constantly hearing God’s Word and living it out with a dependence upon the power of Holy Spirit. Perhaps this seems simplistic and un-profound, but it is what God has ordained. Who are we to suggest anything else?

Six months before graduation, Pete married Geri who was also an Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship staff member. They then moved as newlyweds to Costa Rica for one year to learn Spanish before returning to New York City. The following year, they moved to Queens where Pete served as an assistant pastor in a 300-person, Spanish church and taught in a Spanish-language Bible Institute in the Bronx. Emotional health was powerfully changing people at New Life, but people remained too busy. After a four-month monastic sabbatical in early 2004, Founding Pastors Pete & Geri Scazzero, profoundly transformed by their season of silence and solitude, began introducing the treasures of the contemplative tradition. Imagine leading a church where every staff, leader, and volunteer knows how to communicate clearly. Imagine a culture, where everyone feels safe to tell the truth and has the skills needed to do so. Imagine the unity that is possible when every voice is heard. Through being united with Christ, a Christian has died to the old life of sin and their lives are now gloriously united with Christ. Sinning Christians are Christians who have lost sight of the gospel. The Bible never encourages self-love! People may not like their life circumstances or the way they are or feel and may even say they hate themselves, but what they don’t like and/or hate are those things that make them feel uncomfortable and even miserable. People don’t need to love themselves more. They need to love God and others more. In fact, a sign of perilous times in 2 Tim 3:1-2 is that “men shall be loves of their own selves.” And this is exactly what is happening with the psychotherapeutic mentality that is promoted by Scazzero. The Great Commission

The confusion of this technique with Christian prayer arises from a misunderstanding of the indwelling of God. The fact that God indwells us does not mean that we can capture His presence by mental techniques. Nor does it mean that we are identical with Him in our deepest self. Imagine leading a church where every staff, leader, and volunteer knows how to communicate clearly. Imagine a culture, where everyone feels safe to tell the truth and has the skills needed to do so. Imagine the unity that is possible when every voice is heard. The fruit of this journey leads to less anxiety and more freedom in our lives, leadership, and relationships.

Scazzero only brings confusion to any biblical understanding of the nature of humans by mixing in false psychological concepts of what a person is by nature. Is anyone born with a “true self” before being contaminated by parents and the world as erroneously claimed? Or are they blank or clean slates? No! The Bible declares that we are all descendants of Adam and therefore born in sin.Philippians 3:10 is a strong and essential verse regarding experiencing “the fellowship of his sufferings,” as a means of spiritual growth. Psychology or the Bible? This appears much more than focusing on my God-given breath. Though some may pursue contemplative as a way to be silent, etc., the origin of all this is ancient Catholic mysticism borrowed from Eastern mysticism in the 4th century and mixed with a Catholic tradition of monasticism. The Contemplative Paradigm