Pastoral Counseling Across Cultures, David W. Augsburger, chapter 1

This chapter describes a “theology of presence.” Augsburger suggests that to be effective across cultures (and even within his own), a pastoral counselor (PC) needs to be present to the counselee.

 

What this means is that the PC should be able to enter the world of the counselee – even if that means “entering” another religion. It means not rejecting anything we can accept with integrity, trying to make everything an enriching part of my own experience and religion, and then returning to my own life changed. Augsburger quotes Clasper: “To ‘pass over’ is to enter a new world; to ‘come back’ is to return a different person.”

 

The theological basis for this – for Christians, at least – is supposed to be the incarnation. God was willing to associate with us, despite our enmity.

 

This chapter encourages a Christian to be very open, even to other religious viewpoints. It does not clearly define boundaries, and it does not closely examine the Scriptures to discover whether they agree that humans are to exercise this incarnational presence in interfaith dialogue.

 

The value is that I am reminded I am human. I can be wrong. I must listen to others, learn their questions, “feel” their experiences, if I want to understand where the gospel meets their needs. I cannot assume I am the authority; in human relationships, I must remember that others and their thoughts should be respected as highly as I want to be respected.

 

The danger is that this chapter deals very little with a particular aspect of Jesus’ incarnation – although He was human, He still had authority. Some people are right, and some are wrong. God is right, and those who listen to the true God and repeat His thoughts and obey Him are right. At some point, authority must enter the picture. Ultimately, there is really One King, and we answer to Him. Entering someone else’s experiences with integrity as a Christian means that I must seek to sympathetically understand as fully as I can without denying or disobeying my King Jesus. It means being an ambassador in a foreign country, but maintaining allegiance to my own.

 

But perhaps Augsburger will address that later. For now, I need to be reminded that I am human. I am not the only one trying to listen to God. I need to listen to others, to understand their points of view – not because I see them as authorities, but because I see them as brothers and equals. Others are people who may hear from God as well as I do. Their experiences are just as real as mine. We must take all of our experiences to the God who can tell us the truth about our perceptions; to do that as a counselor, I need to understand other people’s experiences and interpretations so that I can ask God for His answers and help others do the same.