Video Transcript: Self-Humanism

Who Am I? Where am I? Who am I to be? What is my purpose? Have you ever  had those questions I have we all have, because when it comes to human  experience and understanding psychology, as we study the mind, we also  discover how God directs our path and also use as put the tools, he's put the  processes in our minds to become Hi, I'm Dr Mark, and last video I was  promising you a video on psychological disorders. Don't fret, please. Only the  evil Psalm 37 remember that one? But I kind of jumped the gun. Next video,  we're going to dive into deep, dive into psychological disorders. But first need to  look at the need. What do I mean? The need of the human being, the needs of  humanity, what it means to become who I am, understanding the person that  God has made me to be. And of course, coming from the biblical worldview, as  we redeem some of these terms in our biblical approach to psychology, because it's all about God, and God has created the whole being, we can say, Okay, we  then are able to understand these are the attributes that God's put in us through  Imago Dei, God's image into the imprint, the stuff that makes us, us, us, the  DNA. Well, let's get into the first few concepts here, and into the full study of the  human being and self awareness, or humanity, or what we call humanism in  psychology. Now we look at humanism psychology. What we're basically saying  is, what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to study the mind of the  human being? Now you could study the mind of a cat or a dog, of course. And of course there that you deal with instinct there, but here with a human being, we  deal with reason and rationale, and also choice and all this. Of course,  everything is spiritual. Well, humanism and psychology is the approach to  psychology that embraces the notions of self esteem, self actualization and free  will. Now, let's be clear, I'm not here to advocate and to validate the whole  doctrine of, well, self esteem and and self propagation. And of course, you, you  can do it only you and your own power. Oh no, no, as I mentioned, we redeem  these terms, bringing Christ at the center of this he made you special. And we  talk about, for instance, self esteem. We're talking about the fact that we have  this god given innate sense of myself, of ourselves, that we then feel confident,  we feel courageous, and so on. We are still dealing with the effects of the fall.  Hence we identify and lack of a better term, if you will, and yet a good term to  describe esteem, or self esteem, how I then view myself, and therefore depend  on God's power to give me that confidence, that healing and that also support  and transformation almost called to be transformed with renewing of my aha  mind. In that context, this helps us to study psychology responsibly, biblically. So when we look at self esteem, self actualization, say, Oh, here's the this is  actually the person God wants me to be, and that, yes, I have free will, although, albeit in limitations, we then are able to then look at each component. The first  component is self concept, the set of beliefs about who we are. Now the Son  sets you free. You are free. Indeed, the Bible says that, as well as how, God  says that He has made you special. He has made you fearful and wonderful. 

Yes, you have, you have infinite worth, eternal worth, dignity. It's again, dealing  with the effects of the fall and the lies that we believe because of our family of  origin and or because of other people say and we in words matter. They truly  matter. So we look at self concept, the set of beliefs about who we are, we  remind ourselves every morning that we are God's children, as it says in the  book of I John and II John and III John, and we're affirmed and those those  words that yes we are and we belong to God. But then we look at self esteem,  given the context I just defined. It's the positive feelings about the self based on  the textbook. But of course, the positive feelings that God gives us about who  we are we're made special, that is our confidence Jesus Christ? Dr Maslow  probably heard of him, maybe not. And if you haven't, hey, there's an opportunity to discover what he taught, what he as he studied the human experience, what  he was then able to look at when it comes to needs, and I believe again, we find this in Scripture. We find again the whole from the foundation to then the all that  makes a person a person. And this Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and it goes  from physiological, we all need air, we all need water, food, shelter, sleep,  clothing, reproduction. Because, again, what God has put in our souls our hearts is to be able to marry and also reproduce ourselves in the form of children. And  of course, we reproduce ourselves and in training others, in leadership and so  on, as well as reproducing things that are around us, in terms of growing our  food and reproducing things and giving life to the world around us. Well, for the  physiological we go into safety needs, personal security, employment, work,  resources, health, property and having those needs met so we can then  continue to build to become the person God wants us to be, falling onto  physiological safety is love and belonging, friendship, intimacy. Now notice,  intimacy does not mean sexual intimacy. Intimacy is intimacy. It means eye to  eye, connecting with another human being. It's connection, human connection.  Now there are many forms of intimacy. There is filial intimacy, meaning  friendship. Philios, then, of course, the Eros when it comes to husband and wife  and the sexual intimacy. And there's also other intimacies intimacy when it  comes to believers, because agape love and agape intimacy, these are different  forms, and we have to integrate and redeem these terms, so we can then fully  integrate and transform these things, so we can fully help in a person holistically, so that sense of connection and belonging we go into esteem, as we talked  about respect, self esteem that we do have what it takes to be who we are made to be by God recognition, all that need of recognition to be recognized, and that,  of course, identifies how we in the group help each other, we support each  other, we cheer each Other on, and yes, recognition for our accomplishments.  That means God is doing a great work in us, and there's a lot of recognition that  God gives to his people. And from that, we have strength, freedom, free to do  God's will and nothing else. And then the pinnacle of Maslow's hierarchy is self  actualization, the desire to become the most that one can be, oh yeah, to 

become all that God's created you to be, to become. And as the song says,  there's a great praise and worship song. If you're not dead, you're not done, we  keep going, moving forward, because God has a purpose for your life. As those  needs are met, we then look at self actualization in general, that motivation to  develop our innate given by God potential to the fullest possible extent. This is  listed right out of the textbook. So again, as you have the quiz coming here. So  this is exactly what we expect you to understand and know. And from this  definition, we go to the definition of peak experiences. We all those mountaintop  experiences, the peak experiences of the human, human experience. And  they're defined as transcendent moments, I would say, God, moments of  tranquility, Holy Spirit, moments accompanied by a strong sense of connection  with God. Put that in there and others. And again, we're redeeming and putting  here the definition from the book. Finally, of course, we have the unconditional  positive regard, unconditional love. Let's just call it for that. But this is the  technical definition again, which is a set of behaviors, including being genuine,  open to experience, transparent, able to listen to others, and self disclosing and  empathetic. As you can see here, we have a therapist who's helping a young  lady to work through her life issues, because we are all broken, but we're all  redeemed as we accept Christ and our sanctification process is then realized  and also as the Holy Spirit helps us through all of our issues to become more  like Jesus. That is self actualization, the actual the actualizing and also the  becoming more like Christ. Well, important, vital and good to look at how we are  as God's creation, as God's people as God's human beings as God's children.  Next video, like I promised, diving into psychological disorders of many kinds.  See you next time you