Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
THE CHRONICLE
September 21, 2003
Vol. 48, No. 32

What Motivates Us Humans?
There is a man who has researched and documented some of the depth motives that cause us to act the way we do. Psychiatrist Dr. Paul R. Fleischman wrote of some of his discoveries from years of treating patients in his book The Healing Spirit. “Religious issues are present in every patient’s psyche and can be explored if the patient persists long enough in individual psychotherapy. He has identified ten religious issues, actually ten elements of religious psychotherapy, which can be heard during depth analysis, and which are evidenced in everyday places. Each element is both psychological and religious. The combination of these elements is complex, but discovering them forms a matrix for understanding what
motivates us to choose the paths and actions we choose.” (The Healing Spirit, ©1989, Bonne Chance Press, pp. 2-3).

The ten elements that combine in spiritual/religious issues are: Witnessed Significance, Lawful Order, Affirming Acceptance, Calling, Membership, Release, Worldview, Human Love, Sacrifice, and Meaningful Death. In the light of the Fall program beginning, Sunday worship resuming its 3-service schedule, our Habitat house construction, Koinonia offerings, the annual fund start-up, rector search team updates, the September 28 AIDS Healing Service, and of course, fall football (whew!), I wonder what motivates us to choose how we participate in our Church’s life. Three of these elements/motivators are most important to us as Calvary people, I think: Witnessed Significance, Worldview, and Sacrifice.

If our significance is witnessed by our fellow churchgoers, our need to be seen, known, responded to, appreciated, cared for, recognized, and identified is met and gives us a nearer sense of how God witnesses and cares for us. Sometimes the need for our significance to be witnessed is so strong that we are nearly dehydrated spiritually. Calvary is one good place to have this need recognized and met, and in turn to offer recognition and care for others. I believe this element motivates us more strongly than we know, and results in the deep desire for companionship on the spiritual journey.

If our worldview can be expressed, we tell of the need for a cosmos, not a chaos, in the world about us. We feel this need as a desire for a world that is integrated, whole, meaningful, coherent, beautiful, and sacred. It is a need to feel interactively functional in the tissue of life. When our worldview is challenged, it might be that it’s time to reexamine our lives and seek new perspectives to help re-shape our worldview. Calvary’s education and pastoral care offerings certainly offer chances to consider one’s own and other’s views of the cosmos, contemporary issues, and Church life in a supportive and mutually respectful environment.

“ Sacrifice is the capacity to make inner rather than outer adjustments to distress,” writes Fleischman (p.215). It is psychological, rather than behavioral, flexibility. Suffering is a given for all of us. Sacrifice is how inevitable suffering can be made meaningful, and is the skill of transforming what must be into what is possible. The capacity for sacrifice is an extension of devotion and dedication. Much of the Episcopal Church’s theology is centered in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Recognizing suffering in others, opening to them, and finding Christ in them is a sacrificial action, and in turn, may just be resurrection happening in our midst right now.

Conclusions: All humans are spiritual beings. God is etched in our souls; in fact, God created our souls so these elements are present. And most importantly: We all are motivated, often unconsciously, to find God in our daily experiences. When we engage in Calvary church, following our motives, we honor Christ, and we become more attuned to God within us. That’s all God requires of us. Oh, and to act like we really are God-motivated.

George Yandell

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