Changing for Good.

That's me!

Greetings, readers! I am still working on my Hawaii post. In the meantime, though, here's something completely different. Yesterday, I had the lovely experience of being a guest preacher at Pasadena United Methodist Church. My sermon is below. Two notes:

-The book I reference in this sermon is Changing for Good by Drs. James Prochaska, John Norcross, and Carlo DiClemente. There's more about the book in the sermon. For now, I'll just say that I highly recommend it to both clinicians and laypeople and you can buy it here.

-In this sermon, I talk about how to help a loved one who is having a problem and/or engaging in destructive behaviors. I advocate being patient with them, but I want to make very clear that "being patient" does not mean tolerating any kind of abuse. Take care of yourself first! 

Luke 16:19-31

19“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 24He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ 25But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ 27He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 28for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ 29Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ 30He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Changing for Good

I was thrilled when Pastor Marshall asked me to preach here and I’m very happy to be with you today. But I’ll be honest: I wish I had been here two weeks ago. If I had been here two weeks ago, I could have preached on the parable of the good shepherd. I would have loved to preach about the good shepherd. Who doesn’t love the good shepherd? Instead, I’m preaching on the parable of Lazarus and the rich man- a story that makes me miss the good shepherd! The good shepherd is a story I can get behind. This story leaves me scratching my head. It’s obvious what we’re supposed to think. We’re supposed to know that Lazarus and Abraham are the good guys here, and the rich man is the bad guy. But by the end of the story, I feel a little confused. 

Yes, the rich man does a terrible thing. He witnesses the poverty and suffering of Lazarus day after day, right at his own gate, and he does nothing. The rich man has more than enough resources to care for himself. He wears fancy clothes and feasts every day. Surely, he could spare something to help his poor neighbor. Even worse, he knows that God wants him to help Lazarus! He knows the stories of Moses and the prophets, which are very clear about our responsibility to people in need. 

Every time that the rich man sees Lazarus and doesn’t help him, he commits a serious sin. So, we can’t be surprised at what happens after he and Lazarus die. Lazarus goes to be with Abraham, and the rich man is punished. What surprises me is what happens next, when the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to his 5 brothers and convince them to change their ways. To me, this sounds like a reasonable request. When he asks about his brothers, the rich man isn’t trying to escape punishment. He realizes he made a terrible mistake in his life and he doesn’t want his brothers to go down the same path. I would think Abraham and Lazarus would want that too. If the brothers change, they will be saved from damnation after death. But even better, they could help countless needy people like Lazarus while they are still alive. Wouldn’t that be good for everyone? When I first read this story, I felt bad for the rich man and frustrated with Abraham. Why can’t Abraham send someone to talk to the rich man’s brothers? 

Then, I thought about something that happens to me at work all the time. I have training in pastoral counseling and I work as a therapist. People come to me every day to talk about their own personal problems, but they also tell me a lot about other people’s problems. My clients tell me about their mothers’ money problems, their fathers’ alcoholism, their siblings’ stubbornness and their childrens’ bad relationships. My clients care about their families and friends and they suffer when they see their loved ones suffering. Many of them want to help, but they don’t know how. Sometimes, a client will ask me if I can talk to their loved one for them. They say things like “You’ve helped me so much and you’re a professional. They won’t listen to me, but I’m sure they’ll listen to you!” Sometimes, my clients take out their phones in the office so they can make a call, right there and then.

I want to help my clients as much as I can, but in those moments I have to be a little like Abraham. My experience and my training have taught me that most people don’t welcome an unsolicited call from someone else’s therapist. Therapy can be helpful, but it works best when people choose it for themselves. My clients find me helpful because they chose to work with me and we have a relationship. To their family and friends, I’m just a stranger. It’s unlikely to help if I call them, and it might make things worse. 

When my clients ask me to talk to their loved ones, I have to say no. I tell them it wouldn’t be appropriate. People are often frustrated with this answer, and I don’t blame them. I have my own family and friends, and I can relate to wanting someone else to make a change. When we care about someone, its hard to watch that person struggle or make a mistake. Its natural to want to do anything and everything that might help. Have you ever watched a friend or family member struggle with an addiction, or a bad habit, or an unhealthy relationship? Situations like these test our relationships like nothing else. We wonder whether or not we should say something to the other person. We struggle to find the right words to express our concerns. We don’t know if our loved one will listen or get angry with us for meddling. Even if the conversation goes well, we don’t know if it will make any difference. All too often, when we take the risk of confronting a loved one about a problem, it doesn’t seem to help. Our loved one doesn’t make the change we want, and we wind up feeling hurt and frustrated.

Abraham voices a difficult truth in this parable, which is that change is hard. We can’t force the people we love to change, even when we have their best interests at heart. We can’t even force ourselves to change. How many of us know we need to exercise more, eat healthier, or budget our money better? Sometimes, we have all the reasons in the world to make a change and still find it difficult. 

Therapists like myself have known for a long time that change is hard, but we haven’t always been very understanding about it. We see clients every day who say they want to change, but struggle to make it happen. Not long ago, we were taught that clients who don’t cooperate with therapy are being “resistant” or “avoidant.” The conventional wisdom was that those clients just weren’t ready to change, and that we couldn’t do much for them until they got ready. Many of us believed that a person had to hit “rock bottom” before they would be ready to change. We were a lot like the rich man in the parable: we thought that something big and dramatic would have to happen to convince a person to change their ways for good.  

Of course, there’s a big problem what this attitude: it doesn’t help people. If I tell my clients that I can’t help them until they are ready to change, what are they supposed to do? How can they get ready? Fortunately, some very smart doctors and therapists have been working on this very question. I took my sermon title today from this book, Changing for Good. Changing for Good is a book by three psychologists who did a study of 1,000 people who made big life changes on their own. Some of them quit smoking or drinking, some of them lost weight and kept it off, some of them overcame problems with spending or gambling. The authors of Changing for Good studied how they did it, looking for lessons about how to help people change. This book and a few others like it have led to big changes in how therapists and other helpers treat people with problems.

The biggest idea to come out of Changing for Good is the idea that change happens in stages. Most of the time, big changes don’t happen the way that the rich man in this story wants them to. Most people don’t have big, life-altering experiences, see the error of their ways, and change right away. Instead, most people who change go through a long, slow process. It starts when a person has a problem, but doesn’t realize it. It continues as that person becomes aware of their problem, decides they want to do something about it, and figures out what to do. If the person succeeds in changing, they might spend the rest of their life working to maintain that change. Throughout the process, it’s normal for a person to make mistakes, fall back into old patterns, and have to work to get back on track. 

Once we understand that change happens in stages, we have a better idea of how to help someone change. When clients come to me with problems, my job is to figure out where they are in the change process and how I can help them get to the next stage. If a client comes to me and says she wants to quit smoking, but doesn’t know how, then I can help her research ways of quitting and coach her as she tries them. I have a very different job if she tells me that her kids and her doctor want her to quit smoking, but she wishes they would leave her alone. In that case, I need to help her think about what her doctor and her kids are telling her and consider that they might have her best interests in mind.

So how does this affect the rich man and his brothers? What can we do when we see someone in our lives headed down the wrong path? How can we help our brothers, sisters, parents, friends, or children change? 

First and most importantly, we can talk to them. In our parable, Abraham doesn’t believe that the rich man’s brothers would change, even if Lazarus rose from the dead to confront them. I think he’s probably right. As dramatic as it would be to get a message from a spirit, the rich man’s brothers don’t really know Lazarus. I think it would be much more meaningful if the rich man could talk to his brothers himself. Many people who successfully change say that concern from their loved ones helped them realize they had a problem. If we are concerned about someone we love, we should go to them and tell them what we notice about their behavior and why we want them to change. We should offer to help in any way that we can, whenever they are ready to accept help. 

Then, we need to be patient. Sometimes it takes a long time for the words of concerned family and friends to make a difference. In Changing for Good, one of the authors shares the story of a man named George, who came to him for therapy. George had many problems in his work and his relationships. George was also an alcoholic, who was in deep denial about his drinking. The therapist listened to George tell his story for a few weeks, and then gave his honest opinion. He told George that he was never going to solve his problems if he continued to drink. George didn’t like that. Instead of quitting drinking, he quit therapy. Four years passed. Then, to the therapist’s surprise, George came back. He said that he had been really angry when the therapist told him to quit drinking. But it had made him think. Then, over the next four years, other people in George’s life confronted him about his drinking too. Over time, he started to realize that the drinking was hurting him. When he decided that he needed make a change, he went back to the very therapist who first confronted him about the problem. They started working together and- slowly but surely- George turned his life around.

Just as we have to be patient while we wait for our loved ones to recognize their problems, we also have to be patient as they try to change. We have to understand that change is hard, and our loved ones might try and fail many times before they get it right. In church, we have special words for this: forgiveness and grace. 

I experienced a little of this just the other day. My husband and I are both people who used to be sedentary. We always knew we needed to exercise in order to stay healthy, but we had a hard time doing it. Then, we each went through a process of changing our behavior. Now, we both go to the gym on a regular schedule. We have classes that we like to take every week, and friends and trainers who expect to see us. But, like many other people who have changed, sometimes we fall back a little. Recently, we took a 2-week vacation. When we came back home, it was hard to get back into our early morning gym habit. For 2 weeks, we planned to go every day, but didn’t make it. This past Thursday, we missed one of our favorite morning classes, and I felt really guilty. So guilty that I resolved to go to the gym that afternoon after work- no excuses. So, I went, and guess who I ran into at the front desk? Our trainer from the morning class. Our trainer who hadn’t seen me for a month. I didn’t even let her say hello before I started apologizing and making excuses. But after a minute, she cut me off and said “I’m just happy to see you here now.” I remembered that comment the next day, when I didn’t feel like dragging myself out of bed again. If she had acted angry or chastised me, it would have been easy to get defensive. Instead, she welcomed be back with patience and understanding, and that made me want to get back on track.

Being brave enough to confront our loved ones about their problems can make a huge difference. So can offering help and being patient as they go through the change process. These are all things that any good therapist or doctor would do. But as Christians, we can do something else: we can pray. We can pray for our loved ones as they deal with their problems, and we can pray for ourselves as we try to help them. We can ask God for strength, courage, patience, and grace- all of the things that it takes to make a big change. We can seek counsel from a pastor or pastoral counselor. And we can trust in the good news we heard two weeks ago: that God will search for those who are lost until they are found. Yes, it is hard to change and just as hard to help someone else change. But we never have to do it alone. 

Amen.