Articles By: Larry Crabb

Ever since I’ve been a Christian, I’ve asked God for lots of things He hasn’t given. There have been times I’ve begged God for clear guidance on how to handle messy relationships or on what direction to move in a confusing situation, and it never came. I could name a dozen nasty spots in my life, probably more, when I’ve felt desperate to hear from God yet heard only silence.

Nietzsche once wrote, “To grow wise, you must listen to the wild dogs barking in the cellar.”

I’m no Nietzschean scholar, but I don’t think he was talking about the wild dogs of depravity. The evil beasts he had in mind, I’m guessing, were what he thought to be the “givens” of existence: death, meaninglessness, isolation, and the intolerable burden of freedom that requires us to make choices in a random world that guarantees no certain outcome.

Crabb engages us immediately with Nietzsche’s statement, “To grow wise, you must listen to the wild dogs barking in the cellar.” For Nietzsche, this meant the recognition of the desires that cry out from deep within us—the desires of purpose, immortality, and freedom, among others.

Conversations is dedicated to hearing from diverse voices united by a common goal. It’s our privilege to set the table, pour the coffee, and welcome into the dialogue everyone who wants to become more like Jesus. We’re drawn together by our shared longing to experience Christian spiritual formation.

I am again in the middle of a strange spot. That means, of course, only that something has slowed me down enough to see where I am.

I’m always in a strange spot. How else could it be? I’m not home. If my soul felt comfortable in this world, it would be evidence of spiritual pathology.

Every spot on every person’s journey through this world ought to feel strange. At the very least, every self-aware person should feel a sense of vague unfamiliarity, like waking at two o’clock in the morning in your fifth hotel room in as many nights and wondering where you are. The only thing you’re sure of is that you’re not home.

I didn’t want to write this article. My inner world is too noisy. I depend on my distractions too much. How could I write about silence and solitude when I know so little about either? Then the Spirit spoke: “Spend a day with us, alone and quiet, and journal what happens. Let that be your article.” So that’s what I’ve done. I’ve written what follows, in journal style, to myself. But you’re welcome to listen in.

In December 1985, 7,000 therapists gathered in Phoenix, Arizona, to hear more than twenty of the leading theorists and practitioners of psychotherapy in the world come together in a serious attempt at dialogue, clarity, and crossfertilization. Recognized experts such as Bruno Bettelheim, Carl Rogers, Virginia Satir, and Aaron Beck represented fourteen of the more than three hundred distinguishable schools of therapy: Behavioral, Cognitive, Ericksonian, Existential, Family (including six distinct approaches to family therapy), Gestalt, Humanistic, Jungian, Multimodal, Psychoanalytic, Rational-Emotive, Psychodrama, Rogerian, and Transactional Analysis. Most would agree these were the most prominent of the modern approaches to therapy in the 1980s.

Crabb humbly confesses his own hunger for God and longing to know him better. He reminds us that no one “graduates” or “arrives” in this life. We graduate in the next life. Nor does spiritual direction cause us to arrive. It brings us hope, a foretaste of what we will experience in the next life when we see Jesus.

A question from an eleven year-old girl triggered the mini-existential crisis that supplied the energy to write this essay. A long forgotten memory retrieved during a day-and-a half retreat helped focus the direction of this essay.

And a recently devoured book, one that requires stronger teeth than mine to chew properly, suggested the content of this essay. The girl is Josie, my oldest granddaughter. During a late night conversation with this budding epistemologist, with little context she surprised me with this question: “Pop-Pop, if Buddhism and Hinduism are false religions, how do we know that Christianity isn’t just one more false religion?”

My many-months-ago agreed upon assignment was to write an article that fit in with the theme of this issue of Conversations, the problem of pain. As one member of the editorial team put it, I have the reputation of being “so open about what God teaches [me] on [my] personal journey of pain.” It was thought that perhaps I might be able to help understand the promise of pain more than to strategize its relief.