• The Blood of Jesus cleanses us from all unrighteousness what was done to us, or what we did (1 John 1:8).

My first personal meeting with Roman Catholics was on the boat from Suriname back home. Two young men on board were on their way to a military jail. They asked me what I had done and I shared my work as a practical assistant in the mission in Suriname.
They said:

“you are then a type of priest”? I affirmed that. “Can you hear confession? The priest in Suriname didn´t want to hear our confessions as he said you go first to jail, where you can confess”.

When I nodded yes, indicating my willingness to hear their confession, I listened and told them:

“based on 1^st John 1, ”Jesus has forgiven you”.

They were so relieved. After we arrived in the Netherlands they were taken to the military jail. Six weeks later I tried to visit them. I couldn’t, but was invited into the directors office to explain what I wanted.  I told him that they had asked me to hear their confession. The director laughed: 

“I am sorry that you can´t see them. At least now I understand why they behave like lambs… They really don´t belong here”.

– Walking in the light of the Lord:

God is covered in light (Ps. 104:2). Adam and Eve were created according to God´s image. They were, I believe ´also covered in the light like a coat´. When they sinned, this cover dropped down and they became aware that they were naked. Now we are called to ´walk in the Light´. I sense that a cover of God´s light shields us from attacks on our soul/spirit. They can attack our body/emotions, but I have the idea that they can´t touch our soul/spirit if we do walk in the light.

An Abbot asked for a talk. His fellow-monks had hurt his self-confidence deeply, especially one older one.

“Should I still be their leader”?

I couldn´t give him an answer that would help him. He needed to get this himself from the Lord. I started to ask where in his body does he register these hurtful statements. He looked blank.

“Well it seems everywhere”,

he said. I asked for a time of silence and encouraged him to let the light of God go through his body. To pray that The Lord would clean him of those negative remarks. I kept my eyes open to see what would happen. I saw that his breathing pattern changed. It went deeper, more intense. Then he seemed to stop breathing and his face became anxious. I wondered if there was a negative memory coming up? I just encouraged him by saying:

“let it happen”.

It went on for about five minutes. Then he opened his eyes again and smiled. He pointed to his lower belly and he remembered some painful incidents in his youth. I asked him if it was too difficult to handle, as he grimaced due to the deep emotional pain. He said,

“no, I can handle it”.

I just blessed his courage and stayed silent. After about 5 more minutes he said:

“wow, that gives a release”.

We never discussed the issue more. He went back to the Monastery encouraged.

Powerful Peace when blessing Kisi workers and its effect on the children and young people.

Kisi is an Austrian organization (www.kisi.org) that started 20 years ago through an RC couple that both studied theology and then became involved in children and youth work.

They wrote evangelistic musicals and developed into an international organisation. They asked me to teach the leadership about blessing. As a result, they practiced this with the children. In 2013 they celebrated their 20 years of existence. Cardinal Schönborn asked them during the festival

“what is this blessing you are talking actually all about”?

One young boy of 12 took the microphone and told:

“before we perform somewhere, we bless each other, not always with making a cross or so, but just saying: I bless you in Jesus name. We encourage each other by saying: you can do this task or whatever we feel we can say”.

I have seen how young people also bless the adult assistants and they pray for each other.

Sometime in Fall 2015, Bishop Turnofsky, responsible for youth work, asked me to work as a spiritual guide of Kisi1, Gods Singing Kids. It is an RC childrenschoir that is lead by Hannes and Birgit Minichmayr, both RC theologians. It seemed that in this last stretch of my life, I would be involved with them. Sadly this was cut short due to my health as I returned to Holland.

Blessing the will-power

The will is often in the Bible used as being connected to the neck e.g. “stiff-necked people”. We can bless the will especially so that it has the power to be active today in the way of blessing. It is actually an act of blessing people when we tell them:

“we only discuss what you want to discuss. What are your desires now, so we can bless that”?

It is for many such a relief that they even can tell what they don´t want to happen.
The aim is to bring them to surrendering their will to the Lord. 
How we do this? Unless we have a safe approach, it can be that the operation succeeds but the patient dies. We approach them with respect as an individual for whom Jesus gave His life. Respect for the Roman Catholic culture is thus needed.
It doesn´t help to start out as a protestant to say: “I disagree with you asking Mary to pray to Jesus for you”. Or as a Roman Catholic to say: “I disagree with your individualistic approach to the Lord”.
This respect has helped me to hold my tongue when I met something that was strange to me. It also helps me to return to a Protestant culture, when I visit friends or minister there. Truth is important, but the ability to hear truth needs to be taken into consideration as we talk with people of different cultures. 
There is one truth where Evangelicals Christians and Roman Catholic Christians agree on: the saving work of Jesus!

A Theology of Personhood, the Body and the Family

Pope John Paul II wrote extensively on the Theology of Personhood, the theology of the Body as well as the theology of the Family2. He summarised age-old truths like:

•  We are created as spirit, soul, and body, yet we are one being.
• We are made to be together with other people.
• When we marry we need to be open for the Children God wants to give us.
• We should grow up in a family of a father, a mother and possibly with brothers and sisters.
• We are made with a natural desire for faithfulness in whatever culture one grows up; not only faithfulness in general but also to be faithful in marriage.
• We are made to be inquisitive so that we could formulate thoughts, give meaning to incidents that we meet, give names to people and events. In the Biblical story, Adam is the first scientist: he gives names to animals and even to his wife.
• Sin came into the world and hurt people. God provided a way out through His plan of Salvation.

My own theological musings:

I wasn´t much aware of the RC way of thinking, but I developed on my own a similar approach especially as I was working with traumatized people.

•  “Lord, I bless this person with your peace from the top of the head to the foot soles and everything in between”. That was especially important in Thailand, as I couldn´t speak about any effect of the abuse that women had suffered.
• Speaking ´good words´ to body parts had an often quiet but profound effect. Often I get feedback like “when you blessed my brain, something tangible happened”.
• Brain Science exploded about 25 years ago and they confirmed scientifically what I had accepted in faith, as I understood that the Lord had shown me.
• The discovery of Mirror-Neurons which I described before.
• My thinking about the interaction between psychology and Godly Truth.
• My use of this insight from psychology.
• The need for TRUST in a counseling relationship.
• The need for confidentiality and respect for the individual.

Once, at the beginning of my ministry in Austria, an RC husband shared with me a real sexual problem. Then his wife came to me and shared her struggles. As I saw a link between these two problems I then made the mistake of sharing with her the problems of her husband. This resulted in a loss of confidence in me… it has taken many years for that confidence to be restored again. They told me

“that I had a role as a priest even if I wasn´t one and that they didn´t appreciate my attempts to help them by breaking this confidentiality”.

When we make such mistakes in it is dearly paid, even when one shows remorse and sadness. The wounds I caused in my own emotions, were healed, but the scar tissue gave at times again a warning: be careful Téo.

• When a counsellee continues to grow, one can continue to help them, by blessing what God and the person are doing. When helping becomes too difficult as:
  o   When one reaches one´s helping borders
  o   When the health situation of the counsellee is beyond one´s capacity to help, then a more trained person should become involved and one has the duty to prepare them for often secular help.
• Due to the fact that the Christian foundation in Western Culture is fast eroding, I believe that we need to train believers to be good listeners; good observers and they need to know what they can and cannot do. After all, a good neighbor is better than a hard to reach and expensive psychologist….

Medical Doctors in Austria

Betina

With radiant eyes, Betina greets me. My assistant told me that she had a very difficult life behind her and that she had been working with her for 3 years. 

Men and women had deeply hurt her, also sexually. That was all I knew about her, as my assistant wanted that I should form my own opinion on how it was with her now. This was the first time she was willing to see a male counselor. I was a bit amazed by her radiant eyes as I had heard her story. Her husband was talking to the husband of my assistant. We went to a shady place in the garden, as it was rather hot. I asked her what she expected. She told that her greatest problem was her anger and that she hoped to receive help. She shared how she bit her teeth. I explained to her how she could bless her own facial muscles and finally I blessed her hands. She held out her hands but I didn´t feel I should touch them. I prayed

“In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, come, Lord Jesus with your power on these hands”.

Her relaxed hands suddenly started to tremble. There was obvious power flowing through these hands. Then she touched her cheeks. After some time, she looked up and said:

“this is amazing, I can feel how my face reacts”.

This was the opening for her to share much more, as Gods peace obviously touched her body. As I observed what was happening I became uneasy and decided to stop her. I felt she was so open, perhaps even too open. In my ministry, anyone can share whatever they want, but I need to sense the Peace of God as well as I listen. When this peace warns me: ´Téo, you need to stop this now” then I do that. Because afterward, they can feel so ashamed and even experience an emotional setback when they realize that they had said more than they wanted. A few weeks later I heard from my assistant that her dentist was amazed that her problem with her teeth chewing was over. Betina had said that she was happy that I had interrupted her as she felt she had been a bit too open to me because she hardly knew me… luckily she could share than more with my assistant.

The Culture of Abuse3:

•  A survival lifestyle
•  A dysfunctional relationship
  The triangle (an abuser, a victim, a dysfunctional helper)
• Betrayal of trust
• Helplessness
• A pervasive sense of shame.
• Traumatized sexual development
• Transfer of sin results through ancestors (until 3^rd or 4^th generation Deutr.5: 9 and the story of epigenetics).

   I think of a daughter of a prostitute, the mother didn´t want her and gave her up of adoption. Her new parents were strong believers in Jesus. She never knew who her birth mother was. When she was 14 a friend took her along to a disco. She loved it and fell completely in the negative world around this disco.  The parents realized that this girl carried genes that are loaded with the behavior of her parents. Not only her mother was a prostitute, Also her grandmother and her great-grandmother. Initially, she grew up in an environment that was positive and wholesome, these inherited genes were not turned on. Now she battled with strong temptations, as a result, to go the same way as her birth mother. I shared with them how they could bless the girl, including her bedroom, when she wouldn´t be home. I also shared how they could pray a fence around her against demonic attacks. They took later the initiative to share their prayers with this girl. She agreed that she needed deliverance and they went to a Retreat where there was a priest who helped her both in deliverance prayer as well as some wise counsel.
  …

• Suicidal ideation vs. the wish to survive.
  o   Most severely traumatized persons have had experiences with sudden suicidal ideations or actually thought about killing themselves. I have the impression that when there are suicidal ideations, they act like internal children, as one side might choose death, while another side chooses to live. In such situations, it is usually best to look for support in the local situation as well.

Many abuse survivors have told me how they love the quietness of the RC Church service, the possibility just to sit in a service, without any surprises. Especially the age-old ceremonies are so well known that they can “just let it happen”. One doesn´t have to do anything if one doesn´t want that.

Developmental growth issues

• My discovery of the Culture of Abuse helped me to understand people much better: It is a given that we ´as by osmoses´ learn how to live in a culture. It is like the air around us: we breathe air in and out, without consciously thinking.
• The Culture of the Abused is a developmental issue. It is a normal reaction to very abnormal situations as one grows up.
•  As a person grows up (develops) in a culture, there can happen a traumatic incident. A trauma causes a breach in the development process:

My teaching in a word picture: People are like one diamond with different sides. When a person gets traumatized they have a part of their brain that stays frozen in time. This explains childlike reactions among adults who quarrel with each other

• Others have named this in a metaphor: ‘The Inner Child‘
• My discovery of different emotional ages because of emotional wounds of WWII + its aftermath.
  Looking at my own life I discovered a whole raft of different ´emotional ages´. It was like a childrenshome with the accompanying problems of different parts not liking each other or the ´internal bullying´ of a weaker part. I asked the oldest one to help me. His answer:

“what do you want me to do”?

I told him that I had a counseling session and wanted to give all my attention to this client. The internal noise of different voices in my mind made it hard to focus.

“Could you watch the ´internal family´ so I can be fully there for my client.”

“ O.K.,”

he said. Since then I have had a much better ability to focus. This older internal family member became a part of my adult functioning and in this way, I could go down to the rest of the family. There was an incident in 2013 in India where I walked past a Ferris-wheel at an Indian festival. An internal voice said unexpectedly: I want to get in there. The problem was that it wasn´t working and nobody was there to get it going. I said that half loud to myself. Then it was like a huge internal protest. My foot wanted to stamp on the ground and the voice said:

“I wanted to get in it”!

I laughed as I recognized the eight-year-old internal family member and told him: It is not working. We can´t get into it. He replied:

“then I want to go down the hill on a sleigh”. 

I heartily laughed out loud and said: O.K. when we are back in Austria I promise you to do that. Then that voice was silent … I asked the Lord: ´Lord, I have talked about this 8-year-old boy in my teaching courses so often. Why hasn´t he grown up more”? The answer came at once “ Téo. You haven´t forgiven your parents that they were Nazis!” Well,  it shocked me but I settled that away.

 I told this story in December 2014 in Israel in a seminar for Trauma workers. One of the participants came to me in a break time and asked: “How old is that boy now Téo”? Before I could even think I responded with 15. Then I wondered why I had said 15 and a trauma at that age came into memory. I had appendicitis and after severe stomach pain, it suddenly stopped. The MD raced me to the hospital. There they discovered that the appendix had burst and they had to take out 75 cm of intestines that was putrefied. I was not given anything to eat or drink for about 24 hours. After that, I got one finger hood of water per hour for two days. As I am writing I guess that 15-year-old boy is now a young adult….

1 KISI.at

2West, Christopher in The Theology of the Body Explained,  A Commentary on John Paul II´s „Gospel of the Body“, Gracewing, Herefordshire 2003

3  for more details, how to handle these elements of the Culture of Abuse see my book From Shame to Peace

“Bless the Lord O my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name”