Bringing it all Together 7: The Human Person Box

This is you. And me. This box represents the human person.








And there inside the box is your heart. The white space on the top represents your awareness about yourself. The degree to which you understand your thoughts, your emotions, why you do and say and feel the things you do. The black space, you probably have guessed, is the stuff you don't know. The stuff you are not aware of that drives you. And because you aren't aware of it, you don't know what's in there.

After the Fall, when God calls out to Adam, "Where are you?" we get a glimpse of what is inside his box. "I was afraid so I hid." This is the stuff he sees. The stuff in the white box. He can name something that is true in his heart. But there is a whole lot of other things going on that he doesn't see. In his continuing dialogue with God, we see what he isn't asking himself. "Why am I afraid? Why am I blaming Eve for my choice? Why am I not answering the question that God asked me?" Stuff in his black box.

Every family has stuff in their black box. Stuff you can't talk about. Stuff you avoid (by running away or crashing headlong into). Stuff you train each other not to notice. One way of thinking about counseling, says my prof DZ, is that it lowers the black line. So that you pay attention and ask better questions of your heart. So that your heart might look more like this:








The black stuff isn't completely gone, but this person understands a lot more of their own heart.

So for example, in marriage counseling, when a couple says, "when need help to communicate with each other better," what they really mean is "we need help with our black box." They might be asking for help with "fighting fair" strategies, but really there is a much deeper conversation that needs to happen. When their two black boxes get together... well, now, we're having a very different interaction.

Or maybe someone made a provoking remark, and you're just flaming mad. And you can name that. But why? What did that trigger in you? What other story is that anger connected to? Often, anger is a front for sadness and shame. Anger is above the line, but for most of us, shame is pushed about as far below the surface as it goes. I'll talk more about this in a post to come.

It is possible to bring a person to a greater sense of awareness about their struggles as a non-Christian, but from a Christian paradigm, why should we lower the line? Is this just counselor mumbo-jumbo?

It seems to me it's about the greatest commandment. How can you love Him with all of your heart, if have little clue about what's really in there? And How can you freely love another, if your heart is divided?

SO what's in your black box?