Author | Sophie Luo

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) acknowledges the fact that we do suffer – suffering is a normal part of life; we cannot and should not deny or try to avoid it. ACT emphasizes our attitude and response to suffering experiences in life, and acknowledges that the real problem is not that we suffer, but how we suffer. It sees that we play an active role in our suffering, in our attitude and responses to it, which could cause us to inflict more suffering (e.g., anxiety, depression, addiction, etc.) upon suffering (i.e., the original unpleasant experiences) through language (how we interpret our experiences and how we believe what our mind is saying about these experiences and who we are, etc.). This view on suffering partially fits the biblical worldview, as we know that we will have trouble and suffer in this life (John 16:33). However, how we understand and handle suffering, and what goal we want to achieve is very different from a biblical perspective. I will try to engage ACT from a biblical perspective through each of its three response styles with the six core processes:

1) Open Response Style (Defusion & Acceptance): ACT sees clearly how we often believe what our thoughts and feelings say how things really are and what we need to do to solve the “problem”. Although we don’t usually use the word fusion to describe such a state/process, its description captures our life experience well. And as no one likes negative or unpleasant thoughts and feelings, we constantly struggle with them, trying everything we could to avoid them. The problem is that these thoughts and feelings won’t go away just because we try to avoid them, and they often start to affect all areas of our lives over time. Although we understand people’s desires to be rid of these experiences by avoiding them, it’s useless effort and these processes lead to a closed response style and we become stuck in a dark world with our own thoughts and feelings and our struggles to break free relying on our own wisdom and strength, which only lead to more problems/symptoms (e.g., anxiety, depression, etc.). ACT has a keen observation on our experience in this area, and offers a useful tool to help people defuse from their mind, accept their thoughts and feelings as a normal part of life experience, so as to embrace an open style of living. The Bible also teaches that we cannot trust our hearts/minds, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) We feel and think of all sorts of things but they are not necessarily true.

The issue is why we suffer this way in the first place. ACT states that the cause is language, and uses the Genesis story in the Bible to prove their point of view. Genesis 3:5 says, “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” And ACT argues that, “the Genesis story suggests that having this kind of evaluative knowledge (i.e., “knowing good and evil” – inserted by me) also represents the epitome of something else, namely, the loss of human innocence and the beginning of human suffering.” And it uses how children lose their “innocence and vitality” as they acquire language as an example. This is taking the Scripture out of context, manipulating it to prove their viewpoint. Nowhere in the Bible says that “knowing good and evil” or acquiring language/knowledge is the fundamental reason why people suffer. Rather, it’s clear throughout the whole Bible that the origin of human suffering is the disobedience of Adam and Eve to God. They tried to declare their independence from God by eating from the tree (which God had commanded them not to), so sin entered the world, and human life was cursed as a result. We are all born in sin because we are offspring of Adam (Romans 5:12), so all our thoughts, feelings, and actions – our whole being – is tainted by sin. No children are 100% innocent. Just observe the children around you for a short period of time, and you will see all sorts of sinful motivations in their manipulating and sinful behaviors; they are born in sin, and don’t need anyone to teach them how to act badly through “language”, although because the world is now fallen and broken, with Satan always working in the background to destroy us, children and adults alike are under multiple influences (i.e., the flesh/sin nature, the world, and the devil) for evil. If ACT submitted to the Bible, then it would see things this way examining the whole Bible, not just one passage; if it didn’t submit to the Bible, then their reasoning with the Genesis story to prove their viewpoint wouldn’t stand at all in the first place. And think about it: if it’s true that language was the fundamental reason why we suffered, then why did people suffer before language came into the picture?       

2) Centered Response Style (Flexible Attention to the Present Moment & Self-as-Context): ACT observes and describes well how inflexible attention to the present moment and attachment to the conceptualized self would often be the natural development of Cognitive Fusion and Experiential Avoidance. And it’s true that we can’t live in or change what happened in the past, neither can we know or control what would happen in the future, but we are living real life in the here and now, which should be our main focus. This is a state/process that many people struggle with without realizing it, so how ACT helps people to see these things and seek change would be helpful to them, but I suspect that the help would be very limited because it doesn’t address the real issue of the heart and sin, even in the first Open response style.

We can think of Fusion and Avoidance as a fight or quarrel: we have certain thoughts and feelings but we don’t like or want them, so we keep fighting to get rid of them by avoiding them. This fits the image in James 4:1-2a, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.” The Bible teaches that we are worshippers in nature – we are either worshipping God or something else. In this “mental fight” (in Fusion and Avoidance), we want some thing(s) that we love and worship more than anything else at the moment, which could be happiness, self-esteem, wealth, health, comfort, and so on, all of which place me as the center. 

When our thoughts and feelings (e.g., “I feel like a loser so I am a loser”) are saying the opposite (e.g., “I want to be successful”) about our identity or life, we want to destroy it by avoiding it (e.g., avoiding the thought/feeling of “I feel like a loser”). However, if this heart’s worshipping issue (e.g., seeing success more valuable/important than anything else in life, and putting “me” at the center of life to replace the place that belongs to the Lord) is not addressed, it will always remain underneath all things we think and do, even if we could learn to defuse our minds (e.g., not allowing “I feel like a loser” to define me as a loser), accept the experience (e.g., accepting that it is normal to sometimes think/feel that “I feel like a loser”), pay attention to the present moment, and seeing our self as context (e.g., seeing “me” and “I feel like a loser” as two different entities, and viewing the entity of “I feel like a loser” from the entity of “me”, rather than having the two fused as one entity). We would end up trying very hard to rely on our own strength (rather than on relying on God) to fight a battle we can’t win without God. It’s not the way we are created to live; we are not made to live a self-centered life, but a God-centered life.

Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” Our works/self-reliant efforts would not get us very far; they would not save us. When we slow down and examine our lives, we would notice that our self-reliant efforts might seem to have been helpful to solve some of life’s problems, but it’s only drifting from one thought/feeling to another, from one struggle to another, and ending up with many problems piling up to form a heavy burden that feels like it could crush us with just one more “straw” on a “rainy day” and cause a “mental breakdown”.

The fundamental reason is not what problem we face, how we think of the situation or ourselves, how we handle the experience, or how we switch the processes. These are all very important, but the fundamental issue is what we love and worship and how that directs and empowers our life. We are made in the image of God to love and worship Him alone. That’s why Jesus says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) He is the source of true wisdom, strength, and power, and it is only through Him that we can do all things (Philippians 4:13) – things that are submitted to His will, including the kind of life that He wants us to live.

3) Engaged Response Style (Values & Committed Actions): With the above examination, we now see that the most important thing is our values (i.e., what we live for, what we love and worship) as they are the engine that drives our life. ACT sees the importance of values and how all other parts/processes of life are possible to achieve with the establishment of values that we freely choose. God’s mercy and grace has given us freedom to choose which direction we want to go in life – to Jesus Christ, the eternal and abundant life, or to the world ruled (until Christ comes again) by the devil who comes only to steal and kill and destroy (John 10:10). To ACT, there is no literal truth, what’s true is what “works” for our life. We want many things in this life, health, happiness, wealth, comfort, sex, etc., which could all be good things, but if we choose any of these things to be the center of our value, and choose any of these creations to be more valuable than God who is our Creator, and let that direct our path and decide what we do next, we are only heading destructions because there is no life apart from God. The Bible tells us that there is absolute Truth – the Truth of the gospel and God’s Word. Jesus Christ, the incarnate God, lived a perfectly obedient life (that we can never do) on our behalf, and died for our sins on the cross, bearing the wrath of God for us,  to give us this Truth and call us back to God, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Matthew 16:24-26) And He has promised us, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33) 

God will give us the best blessings in this life, even though they might not be what we think would be the best blessings. We know that God who creates the world and everything in it does not make mistakes, and He only gives good things to His children (Luke 11:9-13), even things in suffering, so even our sufferings have eternal meaning and glory in Christ – we do not suffer in vain, because Jesus has overcome the world (John 16:33) 

So the question is: What will you value, and commit your life to? I invite you to choose Jesus Christ, and experience the fullness of life’s joy, peace and love in true freedom, and leave your life of hopeless struggles, tiring and endless self-reliant efforts, heavy burden and emptiness behind. “You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.” (Psalm 16:11)

❤️ For Biblical Counseling Appointments: please click here.