Hope in Pastoral Care and Counseling

Andrew D. Lester

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 1995
• ISBN:
  9781611642346
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

In this ground-breaking book, pastoral counselor Andrew Lester demonstrates that pastoral theology (as well as social and behavioral sciences) has neglected to address effectively the predominant cause of human suffering: a lack of hope, a sense of futurelessness. Lester not only looks at the reasons why addressing the ideas of hope and despair has been overlooked by pastoral theology and other social and behavioral sciences. He also offers a starting point for the development of addressing these important dimensions of human life. He provides clinical theories and methods for pastoral assessment of and intervention with those who despair. He also puts forth strategies for assessing the future stories of those who despair and offers a corrective to these stories through deconstruction, reframing, and reconstruction.

Part 1

Pastoral Theology
and Hope

1

The Power of Future
in Human Existence

The primary phenomenon of primordial and authentic temporality is the future.

—Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

If the salvation in the gospel is to become flesh . . . it is not enough that something is above us. There must be that which is before us.

—Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope

Calendars, datebooks, flight schedules, and alarm clocks exist only to remind us that another deadline approaches. Time is passing, we say, and the future is coming at us. All cultures take note of the progression of days and nights, the cycle of growing seasons, and the process of aging. Time-consciousness is a phenomenon that calls for interpretation, an awareness that must be imbued with some meaning.¹ As Stephen Crites has written,

the fact that there are very different notions of time implicit in the cultural forms of different historical traditions does not contradict the inherent temporality of all possible experience. . . . It is impossible that a culture could offer no interpretation of this temporality at all.²

Philosophers, theologians, and psychologists all confront time-consciousness when trying to interpret human experience.³ Novelists and playwrights must use the flow of time to convey story and drama.

This chapter addresses five areas. It (1) establishes that our awareness of time is basic to the existential context in which human consciousness functions, (2) emphasizes the crucial role played by the future dimension of this time-consciousness in identity formation and the process of living, (3) describes the neglect of future time-consciousness in personality theory and psychotherapeutic methodologies, (4) summarizes how temporality and future tense are two central concepts from philosophical anthropology that contribute to a pastoral theology of hope, and (5) describes some specific areas of pastoral care and counseling practice affected by these ideas.

Time and Existence

Existential philosophers remind us that at any present moment you and I are affected both by a past that we can remember and interpret and by a future that we can anticipate and invest with meaning. Existentialists call this basic characteristic of the human condition our temporality.⁴ Existentialists will not let us forget that both past and future dimensions of time-consciousness are foundational elements within our experience of “self-in-the-world,” the here and now of living.

Exploring Temporality

Augustine explores the concept of time with curiosity and wonder in his Confessions.⁵ His understanding of temporality begins with the logical certainty that only the present moment really exists. He explores the paradoxical fact that although the past is gone and the future has not arrived (hence neither actually exists), both are existentially real. Because he understood that both past and future are conscious modes of temporality necessary to our very existence and our understanding of being, he knew that the present cannot be the only time frame that actually exists. Augustine solves this paradox by claiming that our present moments include our conscious awareness of past and future.

Augustine identifies memory as the aspect of consciousness that makes the past available in the present. The foresight of expectation is the aspect of conscious awareness that brings the possibilities of the future into the present. Consciousness links the three tenses of human awareness through memory and anticipation into a unified sense of self. Augustine summarizes this as “the present of things past is memory, the present of things present is direct attention, the present of things future is anticipation.”⁶

John Macquarrie ties Augustine’s categories to existential concepts of temporality, saying that through memory, persons bring their past into the present, and by “anticipation and imagination” they already possess a future and project themselves into it.⁷ In Macquarrie’s words, “Through memory, we bring with us our past; through anticipation and the projects of the will, we reach out into our future.”⁸ Crites, a modern philosopher of religion, also demonstrates that Augustine’s insights continue to be relevant for our understanding of temporality. Crites is convinced that “our sense of personal identity depends upon the continuity of experience through time, a continuity bridging even the cleft between remembered past and projected future.”⁹ This continuity of experience is maintained because our conscious awareness of the present moment is a process that always works between the past remembered and the future projected. Elaborating on Augustine’s categories, Crites says of the present moment, “memory is its depth [and] anticipation is its trajectory.”¹⁰ He believes that the present tense is able to create a unified life experience by mediating the tension between the past, which is fixed and cannot be undone (although it can be reinterpreted), and the future, which is “still fluid [and] subject to alternative scenarios.” ¹¹

Søren Kierkegaard’s conceptualization of human existence includes a temporal framework that depends on a balance of past, present, and future dimensions of time-consciousness for structuring personality. The authentic self, according to Kierkegaard, is an entity with three fundamental components: necessity, freedom, and possibility. The authentic self exists by maintaining a relationship among these three dimensions of existence, which are closely related to past, present, and future.¹²

Necessity, or the “actuality” as Kierkegaard also called it, is that dimension of selfhood that is rooted in three realities of our existence. First, we are completely dependent on God for our existence. Second, the specifics of our personhood such as genetic makeup, physical appearance, mental abilities, family of origin, and environment are givens. Third, some aspects of our personhood result from choices we have exercised in the past and thus now make up part of our identity. These three realities constitute what we might call the real self. Kierkegaard connects the necessity aspect of the self with what already exists, with the past that cannot be changed.¹³

Although we are always conditioned by these necessary aspects of the self, we are never totally bound by them. For Kierkegaard, the lives of human beings are not predetermined; people are free to pursue possibilities in life. Possibility has to do with the potential for change and development, or as Kierkegaard indicates, in order to become a self, we must reflect through the medium of imagination the infinite possibilities coming into view.¹⁴ Through imagination humans can pursue these possibilities and construct a future that is different from the past. He believes that possibilities are somewhat limited by the actualities but that the future is open-ended. In Kierkegaard’s thought, though the actualities of life condition a person, humans also possess the freedom to act within the limits of necessity.¹⁵

For Kierkegaard, then, individuals are conditioned and limited by their past, yet free to seek possibilities in the future. This freedom is found in the present, which provides us with the opportunity to move beyond the actualities of our self in order to develop our potential. The core aspect of the self is the freedom component, the dynamic center that keeps necessity and possibility in equilibrium. In Kierkegaard’s theology this freedom is part of God’s intended creation, an innate characteristic of our existence.

Living as an authentic self, for Kierkegaard, means taking seriously more than our immediate necessities. We must also anticipate the future with the awareness that we have the freedom to actualize our potential and the responsibility to give shape to this future. Being authentic includes being realistic about the past, expectant about the future, actively engaged in the present, and as a result—hopeful.

Existentialism and Temporality

If we are to understand the human experience of temporality, we must think of time as a totality, a unity of consciousness that includes past and future. Existentialists wrestle with the rational awareness that each moment of the present is but an instant between past and future. Every here-and-now experience (whether cognition, perception, choice, behavior, or emotion) is significantly affected by both the past and future dimensions of time. Past, present, and future are for the human mind and heart the “three dimensions or directions into which the human sense of time extends and which in their togetherness constitute the present moment.”¹⁶

Our consciousness of time is not the record of a series of events that are noticed separately, as if they were individual occurrences unrelated to or isolated from each other. Rather, time is the way in which we organize the succession of single events into a whole that makes sense. Both cognitive perceptions of time and intuited experiences of time join in providing us with a sense of continuity between past and future that allows us to place ourselves in the flow of time.¹⁷ Our conscious self organizes past, present, and future into a holistic perspective that constitutes the temporal context for shaping our identity.

We are aware that objects and things, like rocks or houses, have a past (they have been existing before this moment), a present (they are existing right now), and a future (they will in all probability exist tomorrow). Objects, however, are neither self-transcendent nor conscious of time, both of which are basic distinguishing marks of the human species, from the existentialist perspective. Therefore, the facts of the past and future of objects are irrelevant to their present moment. But for humans, what has gone before and what is anticipated are relevant to the present moment. The capacity for self-transcendent consciousness allows us to remember the events of the past and to anticipate that the future is coming, both of which affect the way we live in the present.

Conscious awareness of future tense comes early in life. A young child’s ability to anticipate a change of diaper or the arrival of food in response to a cry is an early sign of expectation. When a child plays peekaboo, the expectation of seeing the parent’s face again generates the sense of excitement. The development of memory about what has happened gives the basic content for projection and the awareness that something can happen. Watching a child’s anticipation as she plays with a toy to accomplish a certain result, such as pushing a button to make a noise or pulling a lever to make something jump, reminds us how quickly the future tense becomes available to us. The mental capacity of children to be self-conscious about the future dimension of temporality develops rather quickly.¹⁸ They easily learn that something is going to happen or could happen that is not happening now. Herein lie the origins of our mental capacity for hope.

Existentialists also use the word temporality to describe our embeddedness in time, the fact that we are creatures who are at every moment of our existence both bound by and potentially freed by time. To be bound by time means that we cannot escape the passing of time, the insistent march of our future through the present moment into our past. We can neither stop the process of time nor return to and change what is past (although we can change our interpretations of the past).

Time is also a source of human freedom. Time provides the stage on which we give shape to our selfhood, our community—indeed, to the future of humankind. Because we are self-conscious creatures, aware of both the past that is gone and the future that is coming, time provides the possibility of development, change, healing, and liberation. As Ernst Bloch put it, “[Hope is] bursting open our present, connecting us with our past, and driving us toward the horizons of the not-yet-realized future.”¹⁹ I now turn to a discussion of how our opportunity to dream, to plan, to control, and to decide stretches into the future dimension of our consciousness.

The Significance of Future Tense

I have already stressed the essential unity and connectedness of past, present, and future dimensions in the overall time-consciousness of human beings. Since we are focused on the place of hope in human existence, however, we must explore the significant role that future tense plays in human existence. We will find that hope, although rooted in the past and acted out in the present, receives its energy from the future. Paul Tillich has observed that

to understand the present means to see it in its inner tension toward the future . . . finding amid all the infinite aspirations and tensions which every present contains not only those which conserve the past but also those which are creatively new and pregnant with the future.²⁰

Before exploring Tillich’s concepts further, I want to illustrate the importance of knowing past, present, and future dimensions of a person’s life for making ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1 Pastoral Theology and Hope
• Part 2 Future Stories in Pastoral Care and Counseling
• Notes
• Index of Scripture, Names, and Subjects