In December, Very Well Mind published an updated article entitled “5 Self-Care Practices for Every Area of Your Life”.   Lately, I’ve run into a few conversations in my life about the intersection between psychology and faith.

Spolier: I’m a fan of both. 

For the record, I believe in a Creator God who lovingly and purposefully made us, weaving us together in our mother’s womb and knew us long before we were ever born.  And if I believe that, it follows (at least for me) that I find an area of study that examines how He made our brain and body to work in tandem with our souls and spirit absolutely fascinating.

In this article, Dr. Scott gives us the definition of self-care as “a multidimensional, multifaceted process of purposeful engagement in strategies that promote healthy functioning and enhance well-being” and goes on to say that it “describes a conscious act a person takes in order to promote their own physical, mental, and emotional health.”

Those conversations I’ve referred to have been both with believers and unbelievers and have covered both sides of the isle.  Believers who hear the term “self-care” and almost immediately shy away from the conversation thinking that this is completely contrary to and has nothing to do with anything biblical.  Unbelievers who will embrace the psychological viewpoint and take it to the extreme. And some thoughtful people landing in between, regardless of their position on Christianity. 

I believe there is a middle road here that so many of us are missing, and it’s so much more than just the analogy that floats around at times about how if you’re in an airplane and there is some emergency causing the oxygen masks to fall down, you put your own on first so you can help others.

In The Dangers of a Shallow Faith, A.W. Tozier writes “The Lord Jesus has never asked a hard thing of me.  My miseries have always come out of my own flesh, never from any burden Jesus ever laid on me.  What few burdens I have laid on myself for Jesus’ sake, I have never felt the weight of them at all.  They are as easy and light as can be.”

We all have burdens we bear, we all have time constraints and medical issues and only so many hours in day, but I believe with all my heart that it’s time for us to stop scratching the surface of all God has planned for us and embrace the journeys He’s set before each of us with endurance and reckless abandon. 

So next time, let’s dissect what the pop psychology says and look at it through a biblical lens. . .