On Moving

INTRODUCTION Many years ago, during my professional training as a therapist, a colleague commented to me that in so many cases we need to live life backwards. I understood exactly what he meant. If only we had the wisdom and the benefits of hindsight and the experience before living through the situation, we would suffer much less throughout our lives. This little book is going to try to share a few of the tools that I had to learn to manage my life in a very dysfunctional family with two narcissistic parents. Unfortunately, a child brought up in such a family has no resources and few other models than those of her parents to define herself and to help her to develop. She believes that the life that she is experiencing is everyone’s life and discovers other models and possibilities only much later. Unfortunately, the models established early during the first seven years of childhood are even more difficult to change. So, unless it is a child who acts out in a problematic way in school or in public, and who, therefore, obtains professional help, the child has little chance to learn to behave or react in a conscious or different way to what he has lived. There are, however, children, like me, who do not act out, who achieve, who comply, who succeed well academically, and, later, professionally. They suffer nonetheless from this emptiness and unease inside, from this eternal angst, from a deep confusion. Many also have their immune system compromised and they suffer from hidden physical illnesses, depression, frequent infections, unexplained or psychosomatic pain, where they have somatised [integrated in their physical bodies] the emotional and psychological suffering of their childhoods.

Four Views on Moving Beyond the Bible to Theology evaluates interpretive models of applying biblical texts and provides perspectives on questions of moving from Scripture to theology.