Moving Toward Spiritual Maturity: Psychological, Contemplative, and Moral Challenges in Christian Living

by Neil Pembroke

Overview

Three ’windows’ to spiritual maturity

How can a faithful Christian avoid stagnating in their spiritual development? Moving Toward Spiritual Maturity: Psychological, Contemplative, and Moral Challenges in Christian Living explores effective ways in which Christian discipleship can grow in spiritual maturity. This thoughtful, integrative roadmap explains the journey through three interrelated perspectives, or ’windows,’ psychotherapeutic psychology, prayer and contemplation, and moral theology. The author uses numerous examples from everyday life to make the reflections interesting and practical. Unlike other books on Christian spirituality, this book is more challenging and sophisticated in its depth of thought.

Spiritual maturity is a process that begins when a person accepts Jesus Christ as Savior, and progresses ongoing through a Christian’s life. Moving Toward Spiritual Maturity discusses in detail the challenges one must face, including the sustained, in-depth, and faithful attention to psychological wholeness, conversion to the true self, and interpersonal and social responsibility. Effective strategies are given through example and personal story, making understanding of the principles easier. This reflection on Christian maturity helps readers to focus directly on the personal issues all must face when attuning to the Spirit of Christ.

Topics in Moving Toward Spiritual Maturity include:

• reforming the wayward self
• moral or guilt-based perfectionism
• achievement or shame-based perfectionism
• the two types of conversion
• responsibility and accountability
• agape and the loving of oneself
• three virtues at the heart of the responsible life—integrity, courage, and compassion
• virtues as habits
• the relationship between personal fulfillment and the Christian vocation

Moving Toward Spiritual Maturity is a unique look at the path toward spiritual maturity, and is challenging, thoughtful reading for laypersons, ministers, priests, and theological students.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781136450150
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/12/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Neil Pembroke

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• PART I: SETTING THE SCENE
• Chapter 1. Setting the Scene: Self-Fulfillment and Vocation
• Psychological Approaches to Personal Fulfillment
• Continuities and Discontinuities with the Christian Tradition
• The Way of Love
• Balancing Self-Giving and Self-Love
• PART II: TOWARD PSYCHOLOGICAL WHOLENESS
• Chapter 2. Wholeness in the Community of the Self
• The Self and Its Subselves
• Freud and Berne on Suppression of Selves
• Suppression of Selves and the Christian Life
• Kohut and Jung on Disowning Selves
• Working with Disowned Subselves
• Morally Relevant Selves
• The Spirit and the Christian’s Moral Imperative
• Summary
• Chapter 3. Wholeness, Not Perfection
• The Bind of Perfectionism
• Christ and Individuation
• Paul and the Inner Struggle
• Reconciliation of Inner Opposites
• Completeness in Christ
• Summary
• Chapter 4. Cognitive Reframing and Perfectionism
• Guilt-Based and Shame-Based Perfectionism
• The Basics of Cognitive Therapy
• Dealing with Shame-Based Perfectionism
• Summary
• PART III: PRAYER, CONTEMPLATION, AND CONVERSION
• Chapter 5. Spirituality in the Everyday World
• Spirituality and Nature
• The Spirit of the City
• A Spirituality of Time
• Spirituality in Marriage and Family
• Spirituality and Public Life
• Summary
• Chapter 6. Conversion to the True Self
• True and False Selves
• “Storied Prayer”: Remembering, Attending, and Choosing
• Summary
• Chapter 7. Conversion to Compassion
• Compassion in the Bible
• Compassion As Hospitality
• The Compassionate Community
• Prayer As Solidarity
• Summary
• PART IV: CONSCIENCE AND RESPONSIBILITY
• Chapter 8. Conscience and “Contrast Experiences”
• Defining Conscience
• Conscience and Vision
• Conscience and Living a Vision for Discipleship
• Summary
• Chapter 9. The Agape Response
• Agape
• Outka and “Universal Love”
• Post and “Communion”
• Self-Sacrifice and Oppression
• Summary
• Chapter 10. The Virtues of Responsibility
• Aristotle on Virtue
• Aquinas on Virtue
• The Virtuous Christian
• Summary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

What People are Saying About This

Elisabeth McSherry

A FRESH VOICE FROM THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE HAS COURAGEOUSLY BROUGHT US A UNIQUE MODEL OF ADULT SPIRITUAL MATURITY. . . . Combines disciplined erudition with solid psychotherapeutic wisdom, laity-care, parish experience and practiced theological application, to tantalizingly synthesize a more comprehensive view of spiritual maturity. . . . A MUST-READ BOOK for those wishing to challenge society and individuals to a more healthy, and more normative life of the spirit. (Elisabeth McSherry, MD, MPH, National Research Consultant, National VA Chaplaincy; Emeritus Director National Decision Support System Development, VA; Emeritus Associate Professor, Dartmouth Medical School Dept of Family & Community Medicine)

Len Sperry

In an era when spirituality is too readily overly psychologized, Pembroke offers a BRILLIANT synthesis of the psychological, spiritual and moral dimensions of Christian maturity. The description of this integrative journey to wholeness is fully consistent with the best of the Christian tradition. ESSENTIAL READING for pastoral counselors, spiritually-sensitive psychotherapists, spiritual directors, and ministry personnel. (Len Sperry, MD, PhD, Clinical Professsor of Psyciatry, Medical College of Wisconsin; Author of Transforming Self and Community: Revisioning Pastoral Counseling and Spiritual Direction)

Bruce Rumbold

OFFERS BOTH RESOURCES AND A GUIDE FOR THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY. He draws upon a wide range of materials, popular and scholarly, sacred and secular, weaving these strands together with consummate skill, creating a conversation that is self-talk with a theological frame. Most importantly he shows us the warp and weft, pointing to the scholarship that supports or challenges popular accounts, the clashing concepts that can underlie apparent similar phraseology. We are encouraged to develop skills for the journey, not to adopt an unexamined technique. . . . Of particular interest to people who long for ways of speaking about the spiritual journey that do not uncritically embrace current self-psychologies on the one hand or theological pietism on the other. (Bruce Rumbold, MSc, PhD, BD(Hons), PhD, MA, Acting Director, Palliative Care Unit, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia)