The goal of the coach is to increase awareness and responsibility by asking patient questions to help the coachee grow up into these two traits in their work and/or personal life.
Check and check. These are both good things. Jesus (and the rest of the New Testament along with him) uses plenty of language that would go under the headings of "awareness" and "responsibility."
But this whole humanistic unleashing of the infinitely glorious goodness of each human being that's locked away and encumbered by the evils of society, parents and religious upbringing through the power of awareness and responsibility just doesn't satisfy me. Even though these are good things. And I've been trying to figure out why.
I think it's because I've known people who are aware and responsible who are still disasters. They're over-aware, over-responsible, and can't do a thing about it. They're caught up in guilt about the past, anxiety for the future, and a combination of a need to "be responsible" all the while remaining stuck in all kinds of fears that they have little to no ability to do anything about.
And then there's stuff in us that just won't go away, isn't there? Thoughts, feelings, moods, dark dreams, shadows, memories. Thin humanism with all its feeble attempts at wishing away a core nature that is tainted by sin just can't deal with both ends of us: the glory of our humanity and the depths of our darkness.
Ultimately, awareness and responsibility cannot bring full healing to our souls. They are good things, but they are means to a further end and not the end itself.
Not the least reason, of course, being that awareness and responsibility cannot address our most fundamental problem: separation from God. If awareness and responsibility were all that the Scripture taught, we'd be hopeless.
Awareness and responsibility must spring from and be boundaried by a larger story, a larger framework: forgiveness and grace are ours in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Only in Christ can we be aware of all of our junk (past and present) and not have it condemn us. Only in Christ can we be fully responsible moral agents as well as have the power to be changed into repentant saints.
Whitmore offers a beautiful illustration of all our sub-personalities being directed by the deepest, most central "I" like a conductor over a symphony. But in reality, that "I" cannot help but be enmeshed in all those sub-personalities--many of whom will remain mysteries to even the most self-aware of us until the day that we die.
The real goal is to hand the baton over to Jesus. To allow him to conduct the symphony of sub-personalities and to ultimately win over the deepest "I" that is our truest self. That "I" who is made in God's image, is fallen from God, and who struggles always with sin and pride and self-defeat.
That "I" is rabidly loved by a perfect and good Father, redeemed by His Son, and empowered by His Holy Spirit into new creation that leads to new-ness of life. That "I" and all of his or her sub-personalities are no mystery to God as they are to themselves. God who made us, knows our fragmented natures, and is eager to redeem all of it.
And I'm grateful to Sir Whitmore for helping me to understand how awareness and responsibility are two key steps in that redemption. And I'm even more grateful that those aren't the final words in what it means to finally get there.
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